


If I Love You - And I'm Not Saying I Do (OR: You Are Enough)

by Voyagirl47



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Blood and Violence, Episode: s02e25 Resolutions, Episode: s05e10 Counterpoint, F/M, Fix-It, Missing Scene, Post-Endgame, Season/Series 03, Terrorism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:33:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 40,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26963740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Voyagirl47/pseuds/Voyagirl47
Summary: Kathryn and Chakotay have struggled with their feelings and their relationship since the beginning, and especially after their time on New Earth. The events of Counterpoint bring their problems to a head and they just have to have the honest conversation they should have had years ago.
Relationships: Chakotay/Kathryn Janeway
Comments: 153
Kudos: 155





	1. Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work of fanfiction. I do not own the rights to Star Trek Voyager or any of their characters. This is my very first piece of fanfiction ever. I do not have betas so all mistakes are entirely my own.  
> For the purpose of this story, the events of Fairhaven and Spirit Folk do not occur, nor does C/7.
> 
> 11/10/20: Minor updates to most chapters have been made and I'm putting a lid on this thing. It's officially complete (barring someone finding a typo that I've missed on my last 100 read-throughs). Happy reading everybody :)

Kathryn Janeway is dreaming. She had never been a person who remembered her dreams. For most of her life, she would have told anyone who asked that she wasn’t sure that she dreamt at all. But, ever since her return from New Earth, she had found herself dreaming often. She is beginning to wish that she could stop. 

The dreams always started the same way. She and Chakotay were sitting in the shelter, talking about their day and she started to complain about how sore her muscles were from the cleanup that they had been working on all day after the freak storm had ravaged their area of the continent. Chakotay would offer to rub her shoulders and she would pull herself away from him, retreating into their bedroom to get away from the feelings that were stirring inside her. 

She had been attracted to her first officer almost immediately. Even when he was still the Maquis captain that she had been sent to hunt down, she had found herself drawn to him, interested in his thoughts. When he had sacrificed the _Val Jean_ and almost himself to help her destroy the Array and effectively strand them all in the delta quadrant, she had become even more interested in this man she had been sent to find.

As they had worked together to command _Voyager_ , she had found him to be an exemplary officer and a brilliant strategist. She quickly realized that of all the senior staff, his was the voice that prevailed most often when decisions had to be made and that it was his counsel that she was seeking when she needed a second opinion or someone to brainstorm with. As the weeks turned into months, she began to find that her initial attraction to her new first officer was growing. She would catch herself flirting with him while they were on away missions together or while they were sitting on the bridge. She was suddenly looking for new jokes or funny stories from her past in hopes of pulling a really full laugh from him so that she could see his dimples when he smiled. She had dismissed it all at first. It was essentially like Stockholm Syndrome, she told herself. They were trapped here together and her mind was simply looking for the nearest lifeboat. But as those months drew into a year that year turned into 18 months, Kathryn couldn’t lie to herself anymore. She had it bad for Chakotay. This, of course, was made all the worse when they had been marooned on New Earth together. Just the two of them, alone on a planet together, likely for the rest of their lives. It was like the plot of some dime romance novel. 

Her dream continued in the same way that it had in reality. She would realize that they would have to have it out about them. They would just have to establish some boundaries, some parameters for their relationship while they were on New Earth. They weren’t Starfleet officers anymore, but they also weren’t teenagers or characters in some stupid holonovel either. Two adults of opposite sex could live together as friends for the rest of their lives. They owed it to the crew and to their loved ones back home and to themselves. Once she felt that she had her thoughts and feelings in order, she would walk out into the kitchen. He would tell her the “ancient” tale of the angry warrior after she told him about the parameters they needed. The story would touch her deeply. Even when she wasn’t dreaming, just thinking about his face and voice when he told her the tale would bring tears to her eyes. It was not at all how she had thought their conversation would go. She had intended to put a stop to anything but their friendship. Instead, he had essentially told her that he loved her and that he would be whatever she needed him to be. If she needed him to be her friend and protector and nothing else, then he would be. If she wanted more, then he could be that too. The dream was so vivid, that she could practically still feel his fingers laced with hers as she stared at him across the table. 

The dream always flashed forward at this point, like her mind was choosing to play a highlight reel that only her subconscious could program. It was their last day on New Earth now. _Voyager_ had come back for them. The crew had found a cure for the disease that had stranded them here and had come back to rescue their captain and first officer. Kathryn knew that she should be happy, and a part of her was, but there was also the most unaccountably profound sense of loss. She was packing up the last of her dresses, having put her red and black captain’s uniform back on. She let the material of her favorite, the blue one, run through her fingers as she prepared to put it in the transport container and seal it up. Chakotay had come into their bedroom then and asked her if she was ready to go. 

“Not quite yet,” she had said to him, finally placing the dress in the container. 

“You look packed to me,” he had said with a small smile. “Not still planning on trying to capture one of those primates to take back as a souvenir are you?” 

“No, Neelix would probably try to cook him and serve him with a side of leeola root.” 

He had laughed and she had turned to look back at him, when it had hit her that this was their last moment like this. This was their last moment together where they could be truly and completely alone. To this day, she still wasn’t sure what had made her do it. Madness, she supposed, or loneliness. In the space of one heartbeat her subconscious mind had made the decision and bidden her lips to act before her conscious self could even process what was happening. 

“I love you too, you know,” she had blurted out. Silence filled the small room as the truth settled on both of them like leaves after a gust of wind had gone by. 

“What did you say,” was all that Chakotay had managed to get out after an eternity of silence. He would make her repeat it. She knew he needed to hear it again. He needed to be sure that he wasn’t just imagining that she had said the thing that he most wanted to hear. 

“I just,” she had started quietly, staring fixedly at a spot somewhere to the right of him, “well, I thought that you should know that I love you, too.” She forced herself to look at his face now, because this was the part that was going to hurt the most and she deserved to watch him hurt. It would be her penance for stranding them out here together and for loving a subordinate at all. His hurt would hurt her, too. She deserved to hurt.

“I needed to say it to you, just this once. Because we are going back up there and we are going to have to be the Captain and the Commander and we won’t get to be just Kathryn and Chakotay anymore. And Kathryn and Chakotay might love each other, but the Captain and the Commander can’t. And I’m sorry that I picked literally the last possible second to tell you. A big part of me wishes that I had told you weeks ago.” Her voice was staring to break, as tears that she almost never shed threatened to roll down her cheeks. “But then, I think that this would be even harder if I had. We would have been - could have been - different.”

It was a lame finish, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell him the whole truth. That she would have loved him with her whole self and been so happy with him that when _Voyager_ returned, she would have wept at the thought of having to return and not be with him anymore. 

This was the hardest part of what had happened on New Earth and sometimes she would wake up here as she cried herself awake, huge wracking sobs sending her flying from her bed and into the bathroom to the shower, hoping that the steam and the water would wash away the tears and the memories and leave her clean again. But often she would remain asleep, the memories cutting into her soul like a thousand tiny knives. And while this conversation was the hardest part of reality, it was not the hardest and cruelest part of the dream.

In reality, Chakotay had taken her in his arms and they had cried together as he held her, mourning a love that would die before it was given a chance to live. He hadn’t fought her on it, hadn’t tried to change her mind. He had simply accepted that what she had said was true and that they couldn’t be together on _Voyager_ like they could have been on New Earth if she had been able to admit her feelings earlier. The dream chose a different path. 

In the dream, Chakotay pulls her to his chest and kisses her. It is the best, fiercest, most passionate kiss she has ever received and before she is even sure what is happening, she is kissing him back. He stops kissing her to tell her that he doesn’t believe for a second that they can’t be together on _Voyager_ and that he will fight until his dying breath to convince her that he is right. The dream flashes forward again and she sees them dating on the ship, playing games of velocity that end in sexy massages for the winner and sailing on Lake George in the holodeck. She sees them get married, have children, live happy lives together in the delta quadrant. Chakotay dying peacefully, surrounded by their children and grandchildren is the furthest the dream ever gets and it wakes her this time, as well.

Her whole chest feels like it is on fire and she realizes that she was crying in her sleep again. Sitting up, she looks at the clock on the PADD that she had fallen asleep reading and realizes that she still has 4 hours before she has to report for her duty shift. Knowing that she won’t sleep anymore tonight, she decides to get up, make herself some coffee and get caught up on these reports. As her feet hit the carpet, she hears her door chime sound. _Who the hell could possibly being ringing my bell at 4am_ , she thinks to herself. Pulling her robe off the end of her bed, she wraps it around herself and calls for the computer to open the doors. 

“Chakotay,” Kathryn asks curiously before she can stop herself. She shakes her head slightly to clear it. “Why are you ringing my doorbell at 4 in the morning, Commander?” 

“I - are you alright, Captain?” 

“I’m fine, Commander. Well, except for the fact that I’m awake at 4 am. Are _you_ alright? You seem upset.” He is standing in the corridor, clearly in clothes he threw on in a hurry and barefoot. _It can't be a ship emergency_ , she thinks. He would have put on his uniform and they would have commed her.

“I thought,” he starts and then stops, as though unsure how to even begin. “I just thought I heard something in your quarters, Captain.” 

“In my quarters?” 

“Yes.” 

“What - how could you possibly think that you heard something in my quarters?” Her hands find their way to her hips instinctively. This is her interrogation stance. _Was he sitting out in the hall or something?_

“We share a wall, Captain,” he answers quietly. 

He was right. Kathryn had all but forgotten that they shared the wall in their bedrooms that didn’t face the stars. The entrances to their living quarters were across the hall from each other, but their cabins were at the front of the ship and spanned the front of the saucer section, putting their bedrooms only a bulkhead, instead of a corridor apart. She must have been crying pretty loudly if he heard her. She drops her hands from her hips and starts to rub her temple with her left hand. 

“I’m fine, Commander. I had a bad dream. Thank you for your concern.” She turns to go when he catches her arm. 

“Kathryn,” he whispers, a question so private that even the hallway shouldn’t be able to overhear it. 

“Yes,” she answers, equally hushed. 

“Nothing.” 

She watches his face fall as he turns away from her to go. It breaks her heart and she almost calls him back, almost makes him tell her what his question was going to be, but instead she watches him go. _It’s better this way_ , she thinks to herself. _He will find some beautiful girl here or on some distant planet and he will be able to forget all about me and get what he wants. He’ll have a home and a family and I can’t give him either of those things._ She shakes her head to clear it, hoping that it will dispel the memories of the dream that are still fresh in the wounds of her mind. _Coffee will help_ , she thinks. Coffee always helps. 


	2. Nightmares

The sound of someone sobbing wakes Chakotay from sleep at 0400. He knows it is Kathryn again. One of the first personal things that Chakotay had learned about Kathryn Janeway was that she had nightmares. Not small nightmares that wake you up and force you to turn on the light and play happy music for a while. Large nightmares. Nightmares that leave you screaming into the darkness of your room as your mind fails to separate reality from imagination or memory and you can’t figure out was is real and what is the dream. He found this out on his very first night on board _Voyager_.

The captain had found quarters for all of the Maquis crew and escorted each of them to their new homes personally. She had saved him for last. 

“I’ve put you in the first officer’s quarters,” she had said to him, matter-of-factly as they stepped into the turbolift. “Deck 3,” she ordered. “It didn’t seem to make sense to leave them as monument to Cavit and if you are going to take on the responsibility of the first officer, you might as well enjoy some of the perks.” 

He had been surprised. He had honestly expected her to give those quarters to Tuvok or to simply leave them empty as she had suggested. _What kind of person gives a former criminal that she was supposed to be hunting down and bringing to justice the second best quarters on the ship, even under these bizarre circumstances?_

“Thank you, Captain,” was all that he had managed before the lift stopped and opened onto Deck 3. A short walk brought them to what would be his new home. 

“Do you remember how to program your entrance code,” she asked. “I know it’s been a while since you were on a Federation ship, but I don’t think that changing the locks has changed.”

“I remember.” 

“Good,” she replied. They stood in slightly awkward silence for a few seconds before she seemed to recover herself. “I programed the replicators with uniforms and provisional rank bars for all of you. You can find them in the menu under ‘clothing.’ I also rearranged the duty shifts so that all of our people have places to be tomorrow. You report to the bridge with Alpha shift at 0800. If you need anything, I’m just across the hall.” She gestured vaguely over her shoulder to the door on the other side of the corridor. 

“Thank you, Captain,” he had replied. Thinking back on it now, he hated how stilted he had been for those first few months on the ship. But he hadn’t trusted her and definitely didn’t understand her and both of those things had amounted to him believing that she was either waiting for a moment to double-cross them or in the very least, to have one of the Maquis mess up so bad that she could throw them all into the Brig for the duration of the trip with a clear conscience. 

That first night, she had bid him good night and retreated quickly into her own quarters. Chakotay had spent a few minutes getting the lay of the land and then replicated his new uniform and some other essentials. Almost nothing of his had survived from the _Val Jean_ , so he had nothing to unpack except his medicine bundle and the clothes on his back. On the desk he had found a PADD with a copy of the new duty rosters that she had drawn up. He spent the next few hours reviewing them and making notes about potential changes that he would suggest to her in the morning. He knew his people best and wanted to give them every chance to succeed. This meant that he was going to have to ensure certain things - like Seska and Suder never ending up on the same duty shift and Ayala getting reassigned to tactical rather than engineering, despite what his background might have suggested. Part of him had wondered why he was even bothering to prepare revisions when Janeway would most likely just ignore them, but a larger more insistent part told him to do it anyway. If she truly wanted them to work together like she said, then she would in the very least take his suggestions under advisement. Surely only an idiot would ignore the advice of the person who actually knew her new crew members. She didn’t strike him as an idiot.

He was sitting up in bed and putting the final touches on his revisions when he heard it. At first he thought he had imagined it, but then he heard it again. Someone was speaking Cardassian. He had bolted upright and flung himself out of bed. _Who the hell could_ _possibly_ _be speaking Cardassian in the delta quadrant?_ His brain was in overdrive when he heard it a third time. This time he realized that it was coming from the other side of the bulkhead in his bedroom. With quick, quiet steps he rushed to the bulkhead and placed his ear against the wall. With a gasp he recognized her voice. Janeway. Janeway was speaking Cardassian. Listening closely, he realized that she was reciting her name, rank, and registration number over and over. She did it in English and then Cardassian on a loop - Kathryn Janeway, Lieutenant, junior grade, Alpha-7-4-Gamma-9-8-2-7. He had forgotten that Starfleet had made them memorize their identifiers in Cardassian as well as standard English during the war. As he listened to her continue her recitation, he started trying to figure out how he could hear her at all. He quickly realized that their cabins must come together as the saucer section of the ship met in the middle on that deck. The turn to complete the oval that gave their cabins the extra space also meant that even though their main rooms were separated by the corridor, their bedrooms were separated only by this bulkhead. It was her scream that had pulled him back into the present. 

“No! Please,” she screamed. “I —“ The sound that left her next had been inhuman, the very definition of anguish. “Yaq!” Chakotay recognized the Cardassian word for no before she screamed again and then fell silent. 

He had sat up for another hour after that, his ear pressed against the wall, waiting for her to start up again. He had already decided that if she did, he would wake her up. From the sounds of it, her experience with the Cardassians had been tortuous and he couldn’t stomach making her relive it a second time that night, even if she was practically a stranger. He had finally fallen into an exhausted slumber around 0300 and woke to his alarm at 0700 with a terrible backache from having slept in the chair in his bedroom for 4 hours. When he had reported to the bridge, he had expected her to look as awful as he felt, but much to his surprise, she seemed completely fine. She was totally put together and, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t find any trace of dark circles under her eyes or other behaviors that would suggest that her sleep had been anything but restful. He assumed that she must be an excellent liar.

That night, he had been treated to a repeat performance. She started with reciting her name, rank, and registration and eventually escalated to screaming. It lasted for about 30 minutes and then she fell silent. Surely after two nights in a row of this she would start to show signs of strain, he had thought. But the next morning she had reported to the bridge with a spring in her step and carrying the PADD that he had given her the previous day with his suggested revisions. She had made them, all of them. Furthermore, she had turned over all future planning of the duty roster to him. _Who is this woman_ , he had thought. 

Her nightmares had continued for weeks. She didn’t have them every night, but she had them often enough that he was starting to be able to piece together a narrative based on her service record and the things that she said. What he still hadn’t been able to puzzle out was how she seemed so unaffected by them. They weren’t even his dreams or memories and he was having trouble sleeping after just hearing her. It wasn’t until their first away mission together that he had finally figured it out. Kathryn Janeway had no idea that she had nightmares. 

Chakotay had brought up dreaming a few times in passing and each time she had told him that she didn’t seem to dream much or, in the very least, almost never seemed to remember her dreams. He had thought that she was lying, that she simply didn’t want to discuss her nightmares with him. Then they crashed the shuttle on the way back from a trade mission. The engines had been damaged beyond repair with the supplies that they had and so they would simply have to wait for _Voyager_ to come looking for them. When they had discovered that they were not alone on the planet and that the alien wildlife thought they would make good food, they had started sleeping in shifts. On their second night, she had had another nightmare. Chakotay had watched in horror as she started lashing out at invisible assailants, screaming and begging for them to stop. He had always assumed that when she stopped screaming, it was because the dream had woken her up. Instead, she seemed to simply come out of it after 30 minutes and remain asleep. That morning, Chakotay had decided that he needed to bring it up to her. She had to know that he knew. But, when he had told her that she had been talking in her sleep the previous night, her reaction was far from what he had expected.

He had thought that she would look worried about what he had heard since she was such a private person. Instead, she had simply asked him if she had said anything interesting and gone back to trying to jerry rig a plasma conduit to funnel power from some of their secondary systems into the comm system. 

“Nothing much,” he had replied, noncommittally. 

“I don’t ever remember dreaming,” she had said. Her voice was slightly muffled as she had stuffed her whole head into the wall in her effort to get to the repairs. “Mark tells me - used to tell me - that I talked in my sleep, too.” She had pulled herself back out of the wall and typed in a few commands on the console, frowning at the results. “I honestly thought that he was just messing with me. He would never tell me what I said either.” She arched an eyebrow at him and cocked her head curiously. “Do I start cursing up a storm or something?” 

It was then that he had realized that she had absolutely no idea about what happened to her when she fell asleep. She had no idea that she was dreaming about still being in a Cardassian interrogation room that she had somehow escaped from 10 years ago. Chakotay had managed to piece together that she must have been captured during her time as a science officer aboard the _Icarus_. It tracked with the rank that she recited over and over again and with the fact that she occasionally begged that someone stop hurting Captain Paris. Tom’s father had been her commanding officer for that tour. There was nothing about the abduction in any of the official records. He had scoured both her file and the file of the now Admiral Paris. The only thing that even began to suggest that something happened out there was a brief notation about the first officer of the _Icarus_ assuming command of the ship for 10 days and the fact that both Captain Paris and Lieutenant Janeway had been promoted immediately upon their return from the Cardassian border.

He had thought that her comments about Mark had been strange. Why wouldn’t Mark tell her that she pleaded for her life until she started begging for death instead? Why wouldn’t the man she was supposed to marry have asked about what the hell was going on with his fiancé? Chakotay could think of only one reason. Mark had been read in. Someone had sat him down and told him the whole story and asked him to keep his mouth shut about it, even to the woman that had been involved. He had decided then that he would also keep her nightmares to himself.

“You asked me to bake you a pie,” he had lied with a forced smile. 

“A pie,” she had asked incredulously. “I don’t even really like pie!” She had laughed to herself for a few seconds. “Well, except for my Aunt Martha’s homemade Chess pie.” She had looked at him and smiled his favorite crooked smile. “Commander, when we get out of here, it sounds like I owe you some rations for a special project for your captain’s subconscious.” She had placed her hand on his shoulder and he had realized in that moment that he was falling in love with this strange, broken, remarkable woman. 

After a while, he noticed a pattern to her nightmares. They always seemed to occur more frequently when she was under significant strain. If everything was going well on _Voyager_ , she only had a nightmare every few weeks. If things were going poorly, the frequency would ramp up. There had been a few times where she had started having multiple nightmares in the same night. Chakotay had started researching dreams and memories, trying to determine how someone could have such vivid dreams and never remember having them. Eventually, he had discovered something.

He was fairly certain that she and the Admiral had been rescued by Starfleet Rangers. A team of Rangers were the only people that could have pulled off a rescue deep into Cardassian space and the fact that she didn’t remember her nightmares spoke to their involvement as well. The Rangers were trained in a skill that the old Earth Central Intelligence Agency had perfected called memory compartmentalization. It was taught to all deep cover operatives to allow them to separate their real lives from the experiences that they had while undercover. The operative was taught to place everything that happened to them while they were undercover into a figurative box in their mind that they then sealed off until the mission was over. It was supposed to be a short term solution to protect the mind from trauma. When the operative returned, a part of the debriefing process was supposed to include opening the box up and addressing all of the experiences so that they could be healthily dealt with and incorporated into the life experiences of that person. The CIA had studied what happened to operatives who were never given the opportunity to reopen the box and address the trauma. They had concluded that the box eventually starts to leak and those memories begin to surface in dreams and then eventually in flashbacks and finally result in a total mental breakdown if untreated. The Rangers must have taught the skill to the captain to help her deal with the trauma of the torture. Since the captain had yet to suffer a total mental breakdown, Chakotay could only conclude that she must have had an incomplete debriefing. They must not have pulled all of the memories out of the box and it was that single memory that kept trying to surface. 

When they had been on New Earth, her screams had woken him frequently for the first few weeks. In their third week, she had a nightmare every night for five nights straight. On the fifth night, he had had enough. He was going to wake her up. It had been one thing when she had been in a different room from him but she was right there, less than a meter from him now and he couldn’t continue to watch her suffer, even if she wouldn’t remember it. Maybe if he woke her in the middle she would remember and they could address it and move on. He had stood up from his bed and crossed over to where she was fighting invisible demons. 

“Kathryn,” he had said, placing one hand on her cheek and catching her right wrist with the other as her hand had come flailing towards him. “Kathryn, you are dreaming and you need to wake up.” His voice had been calm and soothing. He spoke to her the way you would a wounded animal. “Come back to me, Kathryn. You are safe with me. You aren’t in that place anymore. You are on New Earth with me. No one wants to hurt you here. Come back to me. Come back home.” 

He had felt her body still and watched her face start to relax. She mumbled something and he had had to lean closer to her and ask her to repeat it. His face had been just centimeters from hers. 

“Safe,” he heard her ask. 

“Yes, Kathryn, you are safe here. You are safe with me.” 

“Home,” she stated.

“Yes, you are home, Kathryn. Home with me on New Earth.” He had seen her relax completely and sighed in relief. He had let go of her and turned to go back to his own bed when she started to whimper again. He had felt her hand fly out again toward him but instead of trying to hit him, she grabbed onto his hand instead. 

“Home,” she repeated again, tugging gently at the hand she was holding. He had watched her scoot all the way to the wall in her sleep as she continued to pull him closer to her. He realized in a flash that she was trying to get him to lay down with her. 

“Kathryn, I don’t think this is a good idea,” he had said. She had continued to pull him toward her and he knew that he was either going to have to wrench his hand away and risk her waking up or relapsing into the nightmare or he was going to just have to get into bed with her. Choosing the path of least resistance, he climbed into her tiny bed with her. 

As soon as he was down, she had turned to face the wall and pulled his hand with her, leaving him the big spoon to her little spoon with his arm draped over her waist, fingers laced with hers. If Chakotay thought about this memory hard enough, he could still smell her hair and feel the warmth of her small frame pressed against him. She had slept like that for a few hours and then had finally let go of his hand. While he hadn’t really wanted to move, he also didn’t want to have to explain why he was in her bed and he doubted that she would believe that she had forced him to get in with her while she slept. So he had kissed her hair quickly, unable to help himself, and then slid as carefully as possible out of her bed. He had returned to his own bed, but not to sleep. She had had no more nightmares while they were on New Earth. 

Returning to the ship had been hard for the captain. She didn’t like to let it show, but he could tell. She had meant what she said about loving him and he could see that it was going to be raw and painful for both of them for a while. They had been back on board only a few weeks when they had been stranded by the Kazon in the Hanon system, which had surprisingly made things a little easier between them, as they had more important things to focus on. But once they had been restored to _Voyager_ yet again, things had begun to deteriorate. Her nightmares started back up again and this time there was absolutely nothing he could do about them. He couldn’t very well traipse across the hall, override her lock, and barge into her bedroom for a snuggle. Instead, he did the only things that he could. He went on vision quests and asked his animal guide to send hers to her in her sleep to quiet her mind, and whenever she woke him, he stayed awake until she quieted, hoping that somehow she would feel his presence on the other side of the wall and be comforted. 

Now, two weeks after they had tossed the last Kazon off their ship, she wakes Chakotay again. He can hear her crying next door. This had been a new development since their return. Prior to New Earth, she almost never cried in her sleep. She screamed often - awful, blood-curdling screams loud enough to wake the dead - but she rarely cried. Since their return, it was crying that woke him more often than anything else. He rolls out of bed and pads over to his chair that is positioned next to their shared bulkhead. He has wondered for the last month if perhaps she wasn’t dreaming about the Cardassians anymore. It seems strange for it to be the same nightmare but for her to have such a different reaction to it. He listens carefully to make sure that she is okay and then starts reading B’Elanna’s latest report from engineering, keeping an ear trained on the wall. 

“I love you, Chakotay,” he suddenly hears her choke out between sobs. “It’s okay for you to go now. You can go home.” 

He doesn’t even notice that he has dropped the PADD he had been holding. Doesn’t realize that he stands up and is already throwing on clothes. Doesn’t register that he has even left his quarters until he is ringing the chime on her door. 

She looks shocked to see him. When she blurts out his name, he is sure of it. In her defense, he had just wrung her doorbell in the middle of the night while dressed like a homeless person. She asks him what he wants and suddenly it was like his brain caught up with his body. What did he want? Why had he come? The truth was out of his mouth before he could do anything about it. He was making sure that she was okay. She doesn’t seem to buy it. 

When she asks him what prompted this sudden check-in on her mental health, he decides that more honesty is probably best and tells her that he heard something in her room that prompted his flight across the hall. This makes her suspicious and he can’t help but almost laugh when she throws her hands on her hips and demands to know how and why he could hear anything at all in her quarters. 

“We share a wall, Captain,” he reminds her, quietly. He is sure that she had never even thought about the fact that their cabins were shaped the way they were. He wonders if she was wondering if he had heard anything else in the 2 years that they had been on _Voyager_. Chakotay watches her relax out of red alert as she starts to rub her temple. That’s one of her tells and means that she is worn about as thin as a person can be without breaking. She looks thinner to him since their return and somehow smaller than she had only a minute ago when she opened her door. 

“I’m fine, Commander,” she says quickly. “I had a bad dream. Thank you for your concern.” For a millisecond, Chakotay is shocked. She remembers the dream. She knew she was dreaming and she at least remembers that it was sad enough to wake her up crying. And he knows it was about him. That was what had sent him over here so quickly. That was why he was standing outside her door at 0400 looking like a crazy person. He couldn’t bear the thought that he was causing her pain like that. As she turns away from him, his hand shoots out and grabs her wrist. She twists back to him and when her eyes meet his, he knows he has to ask her something. 

“Kathryn,” he whispers so quietly he is not even sure that she heard him. 

“Yes,” she whispers back. She is waiting for him to speak. He has a hundred things to say. _Do you regret this? Do you regret telling me that you love me back? Do you love me still? Do you know that I won’t stop loving you?_ He could say any of them, all of them, but instead he looks into her eyes and sees the pain and the fear there. She’s afraid that he is going to make her hurt him. He remembers why he had come to ring her bell. He couldn’t stand the idea that she was hurting like that because of him. And if he asks her those questions, he will make her hurt.

“Nothing,” he whispers to her, as he lets her arm drop. He sees the relief flash in her eyes briefly and then turns away from her to head back to his quarters. For now, all he can do is keep loving her from a distance. He can make sure that she is safe and fed and caring for herself. But he will hold on to the memory of what it felt like to hold her in his arms, and he will chase that feeling to the end of the universe if he must. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well this has really gotten away from me now. I'm sorry that our favorite idiots are up to their old tricks again. I'm hoping to get them sorted out soon.


	3. Betrayals

“Well, it’s now or never,” she says aloud to herself. Kathryn squares her shoulders, and opens the door to her quarters, marching out into the corridor like she is headed for war. She supposes in a way that she is. A lot of small battles have lead her to this decision. She only hopes that this war will be one worth fighting.

Time had marched on after that night outside her quarters. They had fallen back into the rhythm of their command eventually. Occasionally, they had even wandered close to honesty with each other. Just before they discovered the Borg corridor and after she almost died when that alien had taken over her mind, when Q had proposed that she mate with him and when they received their letters from home to find out that the Maquis were all gone and that Mark had moved on - each of these had brought them to the verge of truthfulness. But each time, something held them back. They had been fully honest with each other once and it had almost destroyed them. Neither of them seemed willing to risk that level of honesty again, especially since their circumstances remained unchanged. They were closer to home surely, but they were still looking at a lifetime on board this ship and she hadn’t changed her mind about being in a relationship with a subordinate. 

But the loneliness was starting to get to them, because human beings need companionship. It is a universally acknowledged fact. While other species could manage to be alone for years - decades, even - humanity seemed to have a deep and ingrained need for relationships. Kathryn would never forget the horrified looks on her Vulcan classmates’ faces during the lecture covering human culture at the academy when they had been told that human babies would literally die if they weren’t touched enough. 

Chakotay had been the first to break. She didn’t blame him, not for a second. They had made no promises to each other. She hadn’t - and never would have - asked him to wait for her. So she had merely watched with sadness as he had grown closer to first Riley and then Kellin, each time hoping that they wouldn’t hurt him too much. He really had the worst taste in women. _How did one man manage to fall in love with his captain, a former Borg looking to use him, AND a woman who he couldn’t remember 24 hours after she was gone?_ She had never told him that she had found his written log of his time with Kellin. He had left it in a book that he loaned her and she had read a good portion of it before she had even really registered what it was. She was fairly certain that he had forgotten ever putting it in the book and was unsure if he had ever found it again and read it. There was a good possibility that she was the only person on _Voyager_ who even knew about their relationship. 

It wasn’t until they encountered the void that she had started to crack. That vast and seemingly endless nothing that stared back at her through the viewports had almost been her undoing. Her depression and self-loathing had reared their heads with a vengeance and she couldn’t see past them to understand how it affected the rest of the crew. Chakotay had taken it particularly hard. He had tried to be there for her and she had shut him out completely. After they had returned to normal space and she had some time to reflect, she had realized that she needed an outlet of some kind. She started spending more time with the crew and had reinstated her weekly dinners with her first officer. She honestly wasn’t sure how prudent the last decision had been, but the crew needed a captain that was functional and time with Chakotay made her feel whole again. The energy between them during their dinner on the night prior to the new slipstream drive test had felt like being on New Earth again. Recently, Kathryn found herself thinking of him often. She would catch herself watching him while they were working on reports together, fascinated by his eyes and the way he wrinkled his forehead when he concentrated. She craved his laugh and reveled in his sarcasm. Sometimes, she would catch him looking at her, too. Then they had come to the edge of Devore space. 

_Voyager_ had encountered a beacon in their path that announced that they were about to enter a region of space controlled by a people that detested telepaths. No telepaths were welcome in their territory and all ships attempting to cross their space would be subject to thorough and random searches from the time they entered until they exited. They had already started to formulate a plan to hide their telepathic crew members when a cargo ship carrying a large group of telepaths, many of them children, had asked for their help in crossing Devore space. She hadn’t been able to refuse them. And so it was, that they had entered the Devore Imperium smuggling 3 telepathic crewmen and 11 Brenari refugees in the pattern buffers of their transporters. It was a clever deception, but after their fourth random search by Inspector Kashyk, Kathryn had known that they weren’t fooling anybody. The Devore inspector had to know that they were hiding people, but the fact that he couldn’t prove it meant that they had been safe. When he had presented himself as a defector and offered to help them cross the rest of Devore territory in exchange for safe passage for himself, she had been sure that it was a deception. 

Looking back on it, she realized that she had made a mistake in not confiding in Chakotay. But she had known that Kashyk would not be fooled easily and that she had the upper hand if she could just make it appear that she was gradually learning to trust him, against the advice of her first officer. When he had decided to pretend that he was falling in love with her, it was easy to go along and make him that much more sure that she was playing right into his hands. Despite the fact that she knew she was saving the lives of 14 people, keeping Chakotay in the dark was one of the hardest things she had ever had to do. This was only made worse by the fact that he had thought her interest in Kashyk was genuine. Their conversation after the Devore had gone had made that plain and still bothered her. 

“We have officially exited Devore space, captain,” he had announced as he had entered her ready room. 

“Good,” she had replied emphatically. “Tell Tom to go to warp eight and put as much space as he can in between us and the Devore Imperium as quickly as possible.” 

“Already done.” He had looked at her with sadness in his eyes. “How are you doing, captain,” he had asked her quietly.

“I’m fine. Glad that it’s over.” His face told her that he didn’t believe her. “Really, Chakotay,” she had said, standing up and crossing the space between them to place her hand on his chest. “I’m just very ready to put this whole area of the quadrant behind us.”

“Okay, captain.” They stared at each other in silence for a moment, neither of them sure what to say to make the other understand. “I better get back to the bridge,” he had said finally.

“I think I’ll stay in here and work on these reports for awhile,” she had answered. He had just nodded and left before she could dismiss him. 

Several weeks had passed since then and things still weren’t back to normal between them. Chakotay had been distant - cancelling dinners and turning down invitations to the holodeck, even rearranging the duty roster so that they were working opposite bridge shifts or assigning himself to special projects in other, distant areas of the ship during Alpha shift. It had taken her an embarrassingly long time to realize that he must have thought that she had been in love with Kashyk. This meant that the distance that he was creating was either meant as a gesture to give her space to grieve or as a sign to her that he couldn’t be a relationship stand-in when he knew she loved someone else. Possibly, it was both.

She had finally decided that she had to explain it to him. She was going to have to come right out and tell him that everything that had happened with Kashyk was a calculated and elaborate deception on her part. She would have to explain that she couldn’t have possibly been in love with him, since it had been so obvious to her from the outset that he was absolutely only pretending to be in love with her. She couldn’t be fooled by manufactured love - not anymore.

This plan is how Kathryn finds herself at the door to his quarters, completely unannounced at 2200 on a Thursday. It has taken her all day to decide what she is going to say and just how honest she is willing to be about their situation. Once she finally had her thoughts collected, she had decided that there was no time like the present. She knows that Chakotay is also a night owl and will likely still be awake and hopefully, willing to talk. She takes a deep steadying breath and rings the chime.

“Just a second,” she hears him yell from inside. She can feel herself nervously chewing on the inside of her cheek and wills herself to stop. _Why are you so nervous_ , she asks herself angrily.

The doors whoosh open and, for a moment, her whole world contains only him. He is standing in his doorway, dressed casually in a blue shirt that is open at the neck and black pants. His face wears a look of surprise.

“Captain,” he says, incredulously. It takes her a second to figure out that he doesn’t just look surprised. It is more like shocked and a little embarrassed. That’s when she registers that he isn’t alone. Lieutenant Craven is sitting on his sofa in his living quarters. The dark-haired geologist is also dressed casually and holding a glass of wine. She has kicked off her shoes and has her legs curled underneath her, looking completely at home there. _Dear god_ , she realizes. _He’s on a date_. 

It is in moments like these that Kathryn really appreciated the mind that she had been born with. Her entire assessment and realization of the situation had taken milliseconds. Her brain was already reformulating a plan before most people could have even gotten to the first conclusion. This rapid fire reasoning was what made people think that she was practically psychic and it was what made her a superior liar. It’s far easier to outmaneuver someone if your brain is twice as fast as theirs. Thus, her brain presented her with a lie so fast that almost everyone would believe it was the truth. 

“Commander,” she answers quickly, her face betraying nothing of the turmoil inside. “I was just going to see if you had those revisions of the maintenance overhaul ready for me, but I can see that I’ve interrupted you.” She smiles at him, trusting that it will look genuine. “It can wait until tomorrow. Have a good evening.”

She waves briefly at the Lieutenant and turns to walk across the hall to her quarters. She can feel his eyes on her back until she is inside. The moment she hears the doors close, she locks them and then orders a site-to-site transport to the airponics bay. Kathryn knows that it will be empty this late at night and it is as far away as she can get from deck 3. When she materializes, she orders the doors locked and sets a Do Not Disturb command on her comm signal that will make her unreachable and her location irretrievable except in an emergency. Precautions taken, she slides down the wall and weeps. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hang in there with me guys! It's going to get better, I promise.


	4. Lies

She had lied to him. Chakotay had known immediately that her story about the maintenance schedule was completely false. In four and a half years, he had gotten to the point where he could read her expressions like words were flashing across her face. He had watched her eyes widen then narrow as she registered what was happening in his quarters and her brain recalibrated itself. He had seen the fake diplomacy smile that she had given him before she turned to cross the hall. No one else would have noticed, but he knew. She had lied through the whole encounter. This makes him furious. Upon reflection, he realizes that everything makes him furious right now. It was like he was back to being the Angry Warrior again - a sad man, raging at the universe and his circumstances. For a long time, Kathryn had been his peace, his calm in the storm that centered him and made him believe that he was a part of something worthwhile. Then they had encountered the Devore.

He admitted that he had been lonely in the 2 years that had passed since their return from New Earth and his brief dalliance with Riley was a direct result of that loneliness. Loneliness and a pretty significant head injury, if he was truly honest. Head injury aside, it hadn’t meant anything. He had known that Riley would stay with her people on that planet and he would stay with _Voyager_. It had been nothing but a distraction from the pain and frustration of coming so close to losing Kathryn only a few weeks before and not being able to tell her how he felt even then. Other than Riley, there had been no one else, at least no one serious. Brief flirtations and stolen kisses, but nothing more. Occasionally, he dreamt of a blonde woman who told him that he was in love with her but had forgotten her, but he dismissed these as a ridiculous fabrication of a mind under strain.

In his soul, he remained in love with Kathryn and he believed that she was in love with him. They had had their fair share of problems and disagreements, of course, but never once had he found himself doubting their feelings for each other. The Void had almost broken them both, but then had strangely brought them closer together than they had been in months. She had started pulling away from him a little after their alliance with the Borg and when the letters from home brought news of the official end of her relationship with Mark, she had almost cut him out of her personal life entirely. He had recognized it for what is was; he knew that she had to push him away because she was afraid that her defenses against their feelings for each other were too weak to be tested. So he had waited, like he had done before, and continued to offer her his friendship and love, even when she wouldn’t accept it. When they had finally exited the Void, she had started letting him back into her life. On the first night that there were stars visible through the viewports again, she had admitted after one too many glasses of Antarian cider that spending time with him made her feel whole again. Chakotay had felt that they were finally starting to get back on track, in the very least as friends, when Inspector Kashyk came into their lives.

Chakotay had hated him instantly. Kashyk had strongly reminded him of a Cardassian that he had come up against several times during his time in the Maquis. Gul Vorat was an arrogant prick who patrolled the corridor between the former Federation colonies of Voltan II and Voltan III in the demilitarized zone. He had a habit of searching transport ships for contraband multiple times in the hope that smugglers would think that they had avoided detection after the first search and start moving the merchandise for fast unloading, getting their fingers caught in the proverbial cookie jar when the Cardassians boarded for a second time. Vorat had never managed to find anything that Chakotay had been smuggling, but it had not been for lack of trying. Ayala had a permanent scar from where one of the Gul’s men had stabbed him for not moving quickly enough during one of their inspections.

Kathryn had hated Kashyk, too - at least in the beginning. But when he had shown up in his own ship, spinning his tall tale of wanting to help them get their “cargo” out of Devore space in exchange for safe passage for himself, Chakotay had seen her waiver. She had always had a soft spot for rescuing people and loved a challenge. What could be more challenging than playing mental chess with an alien that may or may not be attempting to imprison them all for life? Chakotay had hated the way that he looked at her. He could tell that Kashyk was attracted to her - body, mind, and grit. She was probably the most interesting woman that he had ever met. They had started spending more time with each other and then she had started cutting Chakotay out of their plans. She had left him out of their negotiations with Torat, taking Kashyk into the ready room with her instead. The security detail assigned to the inspector surreptitiously started reporting to Chakotay that the captain was spending a lot of time with him in his quarters. He had even overheard her seriously discussing where Kashyk could potentially be assigned on _Voyager_ if he decided to stay after they had successfully delivered the Brenari to the other side of Devore space. The final nail in the coffin had come from Harry Kim, of all places. Harry had been in the cargo bay that Kashyk’s ship was in, chasing a wayward plasma relay that was causing intermittent interference in some of his data from the aft sensors. Neither the captain nor Kashyk had seen him when they said their goodbyes. Harry told Chakotay that she had kissed him. Not simply kissed him back or not pulled away when he kissed her. She had kissed him. Chakotay knew then that this wasn’t a mere distraction. She intended to keep him aboard and that could only be because she loved him. And if she loved Kashyk, she most definitely couldn’t still love Chakotay.

When Kashyk betrayed them, as Chakotay had known he would, she had seemed so broken. She had planned their elaborate deception to ensure that the Brenari got away safely, whether Kashyk chose to double cross them or not, but he had felt her heart wasn’t really in it. She had so much faith in Kashyk, that she had left Tuvok, Vorik, and Jurot on board and at their posts. It was shear luck that they had all escaped the Imperium. She had tried so hard to make him think that she was okay when he had come to see her in her Ready Room, but he could see that she was hurting from the betrayal.

It took him a few days to decide what he was going to do. He thought about forcing a conversation with her about it, but then decided that it would be pointless. It was unlikely that she would agree to talk about it and he already knew the truth. So he had done what he had never done before and agreed to enter a shipboard romance. Lieutenant Craven had been hitting on him from the first moment that he had set foot in the geology lab more than four years ago. He had always politely turned her down and discouraged her comments, but she had been persistent. One week after they had put the Devore behind them, Chakotay decided it was time to put Kathryn behind him as well. He had invited Lydia to dinner. The captain had crashed their fifth date.

_What right does she have to be hurt,_ he thinks angrily. _She is the one who refused to give us a chance. She is the one who kept putting up parameters and barriers between us. And she’s the one who chose to fall in love with someone else._ It just wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair for her to hurt him so constantly and then to be surprised and pained by the fact that he was making a decision that would hopefully spare him from hurting anymore.

He rushes Lydia out shortly after Kathryn leaves. As soon as the doors to the turbolift had closed behind her, he storms down the corridor to the captain’s quarters. They are going to talk about this. In the very least, _he_ is going to have a lot to say on the matter. She would have to call security and throw him in the brig to keep him from saying his piece. He rings her chime and when she doesn’t answer, he rings it again. After the third time, he calls up the computer.

“Computer, locate Captain Janeway,” he orders.

“Captain Janeway has designated herself as Do Not Disturb,” is the wooden reply. “Proof of emergency is required.”

“Commander Chakotay to Captain Janeway, please respond.”

“Captain Janeway has designated herself as Do Not Disturb. Proof of emergency is required.”

_Damn her to hell_ , he thinks. This is so exactly Kathryn. She builds such perfect walls around herself. Perhaps it is better this way. He needs to get himself under better control before they had this conversation. He wanders back across the hall and into his quarters. He will send her a communication in the morning requesting a meeting with her in off hours tomorrow.

He is up most of the night drafting and revising the message and an outline of his thoughts for what he wants to say to her and then reports to his duty shift 30 minutes early. As he pulls up his communication on the console on the bridge and prepares to send it, he notices that he has one unread message in his inbox that hadn’t been there before he had stopped working to shower and drink a cup of tea. He opens it up and sees that it is from her.

**Commander,**

**Sorry about the confusion last night. I hope I didn’t spoil your date. I’m in my ready room already and will likely be here all morning working on crew evaluations and the maintenance overhaul reports. Alert me if there is trouble or something interesting, but otherwise, you have the bridge.**

**\- Capt. K. Janeway**

She had sent it an hour before they were even scheduled to begin their shift on the bridge. She thought that she had outmaneuvered him, except that now he is seeing red again and he decides that he is about to bring a little bit of Maquis chaos down on her world.

Tuvok arrives on the bridge 10 minutes later and he puts his plan into action.

“Tuvok, you have the bridge,” he orders as he crosses to her ready room. He vaguely registers the confused “Aye, Commander” that the Vulcan utters, as he rings the chime and hears her call for him to enter. She barely glances up at him from the report that she is reading.

“What can I do for you, Commander,” she asks.

“Computer, erect a level 10 dampening field around the Ready Room, authorization Chakotay-gamma-5-theta.”

“What the hell, Commander,” she says over the computer’s acknowledgment that the field has been activated. She stands up and rounds her desk to where he is standing. “What do you think you are doing?” Her voice is low and dangerous.

“Something we should have done a long time ago, Kathryn,” he answers. “We are going to have an honest conversation about this.” He waves his hand to indicated that “this” is the two to them and their situation.

“No, we most certainly are not, Commander,” she hisses at him, emphasizing his rank to make her point. “Now get out of my Ready Room before I have Tuvok come in here and throw you out.”

“I’m not going to do that, Kathryn,” he answers calmly. “And you aren’t going to have Tuvok throw me out.”

“I’m not, am I,” she asks, her voice deadly quiet. “Please enlighten me as to why. This is one very small step away from mutiny, Chakotay.”

“Because you know we need to have this conversation as much as I do, you’re just too afraid or too stubborn to do it. It’s the whole reason you are hiding in here behind reports and evaluations. You know we have to talk about this. You know that it will tear the ship apart if we don’t.” He watches the fight fall out of her just a little and knows that a few of his blows have landed.

She exhales deeply and then answers, “You’re right,” quietly after a long silence. She turns away from him and wanders toward the window. “We need to talk. But dampening field or not, I’m not having this conversation here or now.”

“Why not,” he asks. He sees her eyes flash with irritation as she rounds on him.

“Because we are less than two meters from our goddamn bridge, Chakotay. This isn’t the place for it.”

“Then where and when?” He’s pushing her on purpose, pushing her to commit to doing this.

She runs her right hand through her hair, while her left massages her forehead. “1900 hours,” she says finally. “My quarters.” She pauses for a moment and then adds, “I’d suggest bringing liquor.”

He nods, orders the dampening field to deactivate, and turns to go.

“And Chakotay,” she stops, waiting for him to look at her. “If you ever try a stunt like this again, I will have Tuvok throw you in the Brig and we will lose the unlock codes.”

He nods again and then returns to the bridge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for continuing to read this. I've had to add another chapter because these two simply will not cooperate with me, but we are close to the end now. I've also made some minor edits to all previous chapters and will likely add some to this one as well before we are finished. Happy (or sort of sad, right now) reading!


	5. Truths

He arrives at her door at 1900 exactly. He is carrying a bottle of Irish whiskey that he had replicated in anticipation of her birthday this year. Now seems as good a time as any to give it to her, especially since he isn’t sure that they will be in a present-giving sort of place in their relationship come May. _How has it come to this_ , he thinks sadly. _How could we let it all fall apart?_ He shakes his head and rings her chime.

She answers the door herself, rather than just letting the computer open it for her. He notices that she’s changed out of her uniform and is dressed in a dark green top and black leggings. She has pulled her shoulder length hair into a bun at the top of her head, which he wasn’t aware she could even still do now that her hair was shorter. He notices that the bun is less successful at keeping all her hair tamed than it used to be, as tendrils have started to escape out of the back and the sides. _It really isn’t fair_ , he thinks to himself. Even now, even as mad and hurt as he is, she is still the most beautiful thing that he has ever seen.

“Captain,” he says to her, by way of acknowledgment.

“Commander,” she returns. “Come in.” She turns away from him and walks into her living room without so much as a glance over her shoulder to see if he has followed.

Chakotay stops just inside the door. While this had seemed like such a good idea last night and this morning, standing in the cold low light of her quarters, he was beginning to lose his resolve. He notices that she has crossed the living room and is staring out her viewport with her back to him. Awkward silence fills the room. Finally, she turns to look at him.

“Is that for me,” she asks, gesturing at the bottle in his hands.

“You said to bring liquor,” he answers.

“That I did,” she admits. “I’ll get some glasses.” She replicates two glasses and he moves further into the room to place the bottle on the table. She meets him just as he is unscrewing the cap and places the glasses down for him to fill. “What is it?”

“21 year old Redbreast,” he answers, and then adds, “good Irish whiskey,” when he can tell that she doesn’t recognize the name. She nods as he fills their glasses, watching the golden liquid spill into them. “I replicated it for your birthday.” The admission hangs in the air between them, almost palpable in its heaviness. Kathryn draws her eyes up to meet his and he can see that the gravity of his statement is not lost on her. Depending on what happens, this may be the last birthday present she gets from him. Wrenching his eyes from hers, he lifts his glass and swallows the whole measure at once. It burns the whole way down, but he doesn’t care. He returns the glass to the table and fills it again. Kathryn has been watching him the whole time and when he brings his eyes back to her, she too downs her glass in a single swallow, then holds it out for him to refill. As he hands her glass back, she tosses her head towards the sofa.

“Let’s sit,” she says. Taking the bottle with him, Chakotay settles himself on one end of the sofa, as she tucks her feet up beneath her on the other. She looks so tiny, curled up that way. People, himself included, have a habit of forgetting how small she really is because her personality is so large and commanding. She exudes such authority that you never really register that she can’t be more than 165 centimeters tall, maybe 170 in her Starfleet issue boots. He registers suddenly that she is also looking very thin. Slight to begin with, he realizes that she must be skipping more meals than usual if she looks this way. _Perhaps it is because there is no one to remind her to eat_ , his conscience chides him. _It shouldn’t be my job to remind another adult to eat_ , he snaps back, sighing audibly. His sudden noise gets her attention.

“Well, Chakotay,” she starts, “You said we needed to talk. So talk.”

“We need to talk, Kathryn,” he shoots back, heavy emphasis on the “we.” “I’m not here to lecture you and then have you send me on my merry way.”

“Maybe I don’t have anything to say.”

“Damn it, Kathryn, don’t do this!” He’s not sure how, but he’s standing. She glances up at him briefly and then returns to contemplating her whiskey. One stride has him standing in front of her. He drops to his knees so that his face is level with hers. Suddenly calm, he takes her chin in his hand and gently forces her to look at him. “Please don’t lie to me, Kathryn,” he whispers. “I think after all we have been through, one thing - maybe the only thing - that we owe to each other is the truth.”

He lets go of her chin as she raises her glass to her lips, eyes never wavering from his. He can tell that she is thinking, strategizing, trying to figure out her next move. He rocks back onto his heels to give her some space and allows the silence to expand. Thirty heartbeats later, she speaks.

“Fine. You want to be truthful with each other? Let’s be truthful. What the hell has gotten into you?” She puts up her hand to stop him as he starts to interrupt. “No, really. You spend a month and half avoiding me like I have the phage and then suddenly you decide to take it upon yourself to set up a dampening field in my ready room _while we are both on duty_ and demand that we have a real conversation about us?” She’s really going now and the words are flowing out of her, quick and angry. “And to make it even more confusing, that all came right after the 2 weeks that Kashyk was with us, when you kept looking at me like I was a puppy that ran away from you and found herself a new home. You want truth, Chakotay? Then you get to fucking start. Tell me the truth.” She sits back into the sofa, seemingly unaware until this moment that she had even been leaning forward. Her eyes are flashing with fury and he realizes that in the four and a half years that he has known her, he has never once heard her use the work “fuck” - not even that time that he had to reset her collarbone without anesthetic on Alceti Prime. He can feel the anger rolling off her in waves and it shocks him. _What right does she have to be angry?_

“You’re angry?” The words explode out of him as he feels his own anger return with a vengeance. “I only had to resort to such ridiculous measures because you refused to talk to me!”

“It’s because there is nothing to talk about!”

They lapse into furious silence, staring at each other and breathing hard. After maybe a minute, he watches her retrieve her glass from the arm of the sofa and then frown into it when she finds it empty. Before he can even stop himself, he stands up and walks over to the other end to retrieve the bottle. He brings it back to her side and silently pours two more fingers into first her glass and then his. He places the bottle on the ground in front of her and sits down next to it. He notices her arch her eyebrow slightly as she realizes that he intends to stay there rather than retreat back to his side of the sofa. He watches her sip her whiskey, eyes fixed on something over his right shoulder. As much as he would like to try and wait her out, Chakotay knows that if he wants this to go anywhere, he will have to answer her question and be the first to speak.

“I’m sorry that I have been avoiding you.” His voice is quiet, but in the silent room it sounds as loud as a warp core explosion. Her eyes flick back to settle on his face. He can see that she is surprised by his apology. “The truth of the matter is that I was really hurting and I didn’t think that I could bear being in your life the way I had been for a while. So I pulled away.” She starts to look away, as though to say that a generic apology doesn’t constitute truth and doesn’t answer her question. “Kathryn, you broke my heart.” That brings her attention back to him.

“This is about Kashyk,” she says flatly. He nods and watches her run a hand through her hair, causing more pieces to free themselves from the bun. She takes another sip of whiskey. “You think I was in love with him.”

“Don’t insult my intelligence, Kathryn. I know you were in love with him; a part of you probably still is.”

“You’re wrong.” The sentence hits him like a slap in the face. 

“Do you think that I didn’t see you together,” he snaps. “Do you think that I didn’t notice that you were cutting me out? Do you think that no one on this ship told me that you were spending so much time alone with him? That no one saw you kiss him before he left? I’m not an idiot, Kathryn. I’d appreciate it if you would stop treating me like one.”

“I don’t think you are an idiot, Chakotay.” Her reply is barely a whisper. “I do think that you don’t have all the facts.”

“Enlighten me, then,” he says sarcastically.

Her eyes narrow into a stare that would be lethal if looks could kill. He has watched that look reduce more than a few hostile aliens to little more than trembling children, but he manages to hold her gaze without wavering. He will not be intimidated. After a second, she downs the last of her drink, holding her glass out to him for a refill as she begins to speak.

“You know that neither of us trusted Kashyk when he made his proposition to help us. What you don’t know was that he started flirting with me from the very first moment that we were alone. He was feeling me out, trying to earn my trust. He wanted me to believe that he was attracted to me, and later that he was falling in love with me. I suppose it’s possible that he _was_ attracted to me, but I knew that he was absolutely not in love with me. That’s how I knew that he was definitely not on our side. Why lie about something so totally inconsequential unless you are trying to distract from the fact that you are lying about more important things, you know? So I played along, Chakotay. I pretended that I was falling in love with him. I made him believe that I trusted him when I cut you out in favor of him. And yes, I kissed him to seal the deal. I kissed him to convince him that he had us - me - hook, line, and sinker. But I didn’t love him. I hated him; I hate him still.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, Kathryn,” he interrupts, shaking his head in disagreement. “You definitely trusted him. We had no plan to hide Tuvok, Vorik, and Jurot. It’s a miracle that we aren’t all in an Imperium prison.” She sighs and closes her eyes, rubbing her right hand over her face.

“I hid them in plain sight, Chakotay. Kashyk’s men didn’t know what any of them looked like. Kashyk did, but he was too busy with me to point any of them out and too arrogant to actually order his men to do a person by person sweep of the crew again. He believed that he knew our plans and I believed that when he lost the Brenari that he would slink away with his tail between his legs like the coward that he is.” She leans forward slightly and places a hand on his shoulder. “Tuvok couldn’t go back into the transporter buffers. None of them could go with the Brenari. Hiding them amongst the crew was my only option.” She’s staring at his face, begging him to understand. “I did not then, nor do I now, love Kashyk.”

He looks into her eyes searching for the lie. He had been so sure that she loved that awful man. Perhaps he had been blinded by his own jealousy and pain. Perhaps he had assumed that she could toss him aside in favor of that jackass because he knew his own loneliness and imagined how great her’s must be. He _had_ been an idiot and he said as much.

“I told you that you aren’t an idiot,” she says with a slight smile. It quickly transforms into a frown as she continues. “We just - we can’t talk about this stuff without -“ She pauses, searching for a phrase that is safe. “Without coming dangerously close to crossing those lines that we can’t cross. At least not until we split a bottle of whiskey, apparently.”

Chakotay feels a more companionable silence settle on them now, each of them lost in their own thoughts. He can’t even remember how many times their inability to talk about their emotions with each other has hurt them. He realizes suddenly that they haven’t been truly honest about their feelings since she had told him she loved him on New Earth. Kathryn’s voice brings him out of his reverie.

“I am sorry, you know.”

“For what,” he answers. He turns himself around to rest his back against the front of the sofa and extends his legs in front of him. He feels her slide off the sofa and drop beside him to sit the same way. She reaches across his lap for the whiskey bottle and pours herself another. _Is that five or six for her_ , he thinks to himself and then realizes that he has no idea how many he has had either.

“For keeping you in the dark,” she finally finishes. “As I recall, I promised that I wouldn’t do that again.”

“Apology accepted,” he answers. “It was the right call in this case,” he adds after a few seconds have passed. “If you had told me ahead of time that your plan involved even mild seduction, I probably would have had to be sedated.” He hears her chuckle quietly beside him. “Can I ask you a question?”

“You mean other than that one,” she quips.

He rolls his eyes. “You know what I mean.”

“Fire away,” she answers. Her head is resting against the front of the sofa and she has her eyes mostly closed.

“You said that you knew Kashyk wasn’t in love with you, but you didn’t say how you knew.”

“That’s not a question,” she murmurs. He touches her shoulder so that she will open her eyes.

“How did you know that he was lying about being in love with you?”

She stares into his eyes for what feels like an eternity. He can tell that she is looking for something, but isn’t sure if she finds it. Finally, she speaks.

“I’ll answer your question, if you answer one of mine first.”

“Okay,” he answers cautiously.

“How serious are things with the Lieutenant?”

It takes Chakotay a moment to even process the question. _Which Lieutenant_ , he thinks. _Dear god, Lydia_ , he realizes an embarrassingly long time later. He has been silent so long that he is sure that she will start to think that he is not going to answer.

“You crashed our fifth date,” he says cautiously. “Before you arrived, I had already decided that it would be the last. She’s nice enough, but really not my type.” He hears Kathryn mutter something under her breath about her not being blonde enough, but chooses to ignore it. “I was going to break things off tomorrow morning.” She nods silently and then rests her head against the sofa again. “Your turn,” he prompts.

“I suppose.” She lapses into silence again and he wonders if she has fallen asleep when she finally speaks. “I knew because I know what it looks like when someone who loves you looks at you when they think you don’t know they are watching.” She opens her eyes and looks directly into his soul. “I’ve seen it thousands of times. I can’t be fooled by an imitation.” 

It’s truth. Bright, shining truth falling from her lips and into the space between them. He is sure then that she knows that he still loves her. She’s seen him loving her; cherished it and hidden it so deep inside her soul that when someone had tried to fool her with false love, she recognized it immediately. He feels relief like a river running through him, cleaning away the pain and the fear and the hurt that had festered in his heart. He realizes that he is at peace for the first time in weeks. He senses a tear spill over onto his cheek and watches her reach up to brush it away. She is so close to him now, her face only a hand-breadth from his. And he knows he shouldn’t, but he can’t stop himself from leaning forward, eyes locked with hers as they both watch the distance between them narrow until his lips brush hers. It’s only barely a kiss.

He starts to pull himself away from her, ready to apologize for his weakness, when she moves her hand from his cheek to his neck and pulls him back. Their lips crash together in a mess of pressure and teeth and tongues. She tastes of whiskey and coffee and something else that he decides must just be Kathryn. He pulls her into his lap as her hands get lost in his hair. She’s pressed so close to him that he isn’t sure where he ends and she begins anymore. An eternity later, when she pulls her lips away from his, it’s like being ripped apart.

She rests her forehead against his and he feels her hands untangle themselves from his hair and drift down to his chest, preparing to push herself away from him.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

“For what,” he asks. He’s still a little dazed from their kiss and his brain is having to play catch up.

“For everything,” she answers cryptically. She does push herself away from him now, unwrapping her legs from around his waist and retreating to her own section of the floor. She downs the last of her whiskey and then seems to contemplate having another before she reaches up and slides the empty glass onto the end table instead. He lets the silence stretch between them, giving her the space that she needs to decide if she is going to continue.

“I couldn’t -“ she starts and then shakes her head, hand drifting over her mouth. “I shouldn’t have done that.” She looks back up at him and he sees pain and fear and sorrow in her eyes. “It wasn’t fair to you.”

“Kathryn,” he begins, but she just shakes her head again, rubbing her face forcefully with both hands.

“I know what you are going to say, Chakotay,”

“Why can’t we, Kathryn?” He presses ahead, determined to actually talk about it. They have wasted enough time and hurt each other too often to believe that this is a conversation that they can get out of having.

“Because nothing has changed,” she says sadly. “You are still you. I am still me. We are still in charge of 150 people trapped out here in this godforsaken section of the galaxy.” He is surprised to hear her say that. She usually tries to be so optimistic about the delta quadrant. She must see his surprise and she sighs. “I suppose ‘godforsaken’ is unfair.”

“Even you get to be human sometimes, Kathryn,” he replies. They both know he isn’t just talking about her feelings about the delta quadrant.

“Not about this.”

“We love each other, Kathryn. Or at least, I love you,” he amends. He believes she loves him, but she has only actually told him once, several lifetimes ago. She stands up from the floor and starts to pace the living room. She gets through three laps before she stops and kneels in front of him.

“It doesn’t matter, Chakotay.” He tries to interject but she puts a finger on his lips to quiet him. “Even if we love each other, even if I love you - and I’m not saying that I do - this ship always has to come first. These people that we are in charge of, their needs always have to come first. Their safety, their lives, getting them home - it’s all more important than me,” she pauses for a second before adding “or you.” He’s looking into her eyes and he can see her heart breaking with every word.

“And if I love you, if I let myself want more than what we have -“ She stops again, and he watches her swallow and push her feelings into her stomach. “If I love you,” she restarts, her voice breaking anyway as she starts to cry despite her efforts, “I would let the whole crew suffer, abandon the mission, destroy the whole universe, if there was a choice between those things and saving you.”

He pulls her into his chest as she cries, holding her as she sobs against him with her head tucked under his chin. His own tears fall silently into her hair. _It isn’t fair_ , he thinks for the second time this evening. But he knows that she is right. They have both already risked more than they should have several times to save each other. If he was able to hold her and wake up with her and kiss her whenever he wanted, he knows that he would fly the ship into hell itself to save her. And while there is no guarantee that he wouldn’t still do it, even without them being together, he knows that it doesn’t make her less right. He isn’t sure how long they sit that way, only that it is long after they have both stopped crying.

“Kathryn,” he whispers, stroking her hair. She looks up at him, her eyes still red-rimmed and her cheeks raw. “I’m not going to stop loving you.”

“Chakotay,” she starts, but it is his turn to silence her with a look.

“I’m not, Kathryn. I honestly don’t know if I could, even if I wanted to. I understand what you are saying and I know that you are right. But I need you to know that I’m going to love you forever. And when we make it back to the alpha quadrant, I’ll be waiting.”

“I can’t ask you to do that.” She pushes herself away from his chest. “I won’t, Chakotay. It’s not fair to you. You deserve happiness.”

“I won’t be happy with anyone but you, Kathryn. I’m sure of that now.” She’s still shaking her head, unwilling to accept his answer.

“You want children, Chakotay. A family, a home. I can’t give you those things.”

“My home is with you. And you aren’t asking me to do anything, Kathryn. I’m telling you that I will wait. I’ll wait for my whole life if I have to.”

“Forever is a long time.”

“Not if it’s with you,” he says simply. “And if I change my mind, I promise to let you know before you stumble into another date.” She smiles at him sadly, as though she knows that that day will come eventually.

“A heads up would be nice,” she admits. “Being blindsided by it was - uncomfortable.” Pain flashes across her face momentarily and Chakotay suddenly realizes just how deeply he had hurt her. He wants to pull her to him and kiss it away but knows that he can’t. He settles for taking her hand in his and brushing it briefly across his lips.

“I should probably go,” he says. She scoots away from him slightly so that they both have the space to stand. He knows that his back will have something to say to him tomorrow about the fact that he just spent 3 hours sitting on the floor, but he really doesn’t care. She walks him to the door and they linger there on either side of the wall. He can tell that neither of them really want to say goodbye. They both know that these few moments of truth will be all that they have of each other for a long time - possibly for the rest of their lives.

“Well, thanks for the whiskey,” she says.

“You’re welcome.” He smiles at her and sees her eyes light up. “Breakfast in the morning?”

“If I’m conscious.” She raises an eyebrow and smiles up at him crookedly. “I haven’t had that much to drink since the last Prixin celebration.”

“I’ll ring the chime quietly,” he jokes. He watches her face become serious again.

“Chakotay,” she whispers.

“Yes, Kathryn?”

“You’re my home, too.” He feels himself smile dimples deep and then the doors close between them. _It isn’t much_ , a voice in his head tries to say. _It’s enough_ , he answers. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has continued to read this thing! Only one more chapter left :)


	6. Promises

Kathryn Janeway is dreaming.

She was back on _Voyager_ during their first year in the delta quadrant and she had just been woken by the chime on her door. She groaned loudly and sat up on her elbows.

“Computer, time.”

“0237 hours,” came the answer. She groaned again and threw herself back down onto her pillow. She had been asleep for less than hour. _What the hell could anyone possibly need at 2:30 in the morning?_ The chime sounded again. _I’ll just ignore it_ , she thought to herself. If it was an emergency there would be a red alert, a sound for general quarters, a comm to get her to the bridge, something. _This is a part of boundary setting. Set yourself some boundaries, Kathryn. Go back to sleep._ The chime sounded for a third time. It was followed by a knock on the door.

“I’m coming,” she yelled as she flung herself out of bed, shrugging a sweater on as she walked into her living room to her door. She opened it fully prepared to deliver a thorough dressing down to whoever couldn’t take the hint that she didn’t want to be disturbed but was shocked into stunned silence when she saw that it was Commander Chakotay.

“Sorry to disturb you, Captain,” he said as quickly as possible, “but you need to come to the bridge with me right now.”

“What?” It wasn’t her cleverest retort. She shook her head slightly. “Why do I need to come to the bridge, Commander? Aren’t _you_ supposed to be running the bridge right now?” They had been cycling through all of the shifts as a command team for the last few months in an effort to get to know the whole crew. She was currently running Beta shift and he had been on Gamma shift for the last week. He should still have command of the bridge until Alpha shift relieved him at 0800.

“I am on the bridge, Captain, but there is something that you need to see right now.” He was practically hopping up and down and then he reached out and grabbed her hand. “Please, Captain, before we miss it!” It registered with her then that he was excited. That it wasn’t fear that was driving his urgency but joy. She smiled in spite of herself, his excitement spreading to her like a virus.

“Commander, is the bridge on fire?”

“No, Captain,” he answered hurriedly.

“Is _Voyager_ in any danger?”

“No, Captain!” He was starting to get irritated with her and it was registering in his answers.

“Is anyone bleeding or actively dying?”

“Captain, please, we don’t have a lot of time here!”

“Commander, if none of those things are happening, then I am not showing up on the bridge in my pajamas,” she said flatly.

“But Captain,” he interrupted. She threw up a hand to silence him.

“Chakotay, I’m going to come with you, but I have to put on other clothes first.” He seemed shocked at her use of his name rather than his title. She used it to her advantage and took back the hand that he had been holding. “Go call the turbolift and I’ll be there before the doors can close behind you.” She closed the door between them and ran into her bedroom.

She had decided that the first time she had ended up on the bridge in her nightgown would be the last. There had been a real emergency that time, a Vidiian raiding party hidden in a meteor cluster, and even a perfect score on the Starfleet readiness exam couldn’t have gotten her dressed and to the bridge in time to ensure that _Voyager_ continued to be in one piece. She had had no choice but to command the bridge and make repairs for an hour and a half in her pale pink silk nightie. She hadn’t been sure that Harry would ever be able to look her in the face again.

Since then, Kathryn had taken to sleeping in things that were a little more functional and would cause significantly less embarrassment if she was seen in them. She quickly pulled off her pair of Starfleet Academy running shorts and threw on her uniform slacks, then replaced her sweater with her jacket. She zipped it up all the way so that no one could see that she was only wearing a tank top underneath. She would be without her pips, but she decided it wouldn’t matter if she wasn’t taking command of the bridge. She grabbed her boots and ran out of her quarters and down the hall barefoot, sliding into the turbolift with the Commander just before the doors closed.

“Bridge,” he ordered, as she used his shoulder for balance while she pulled on her boots.

As the turbolift arrived on the bridge, she decided that she looked practically ready for duty, except for the fact that she wasn’t wearing her turtleneck. Or socks. And her hair was still a ridiculous mess cascading down her shoulders. She sighed to herself. _At least it’s an improvement over the nightie._

“So what’s so urgent that you have to drag me out of bed in the middle of the night, Commander,” she asked curiously, her focus on him and his strange behavior. Rather than answer, he simply cheated his eyes to the viewscreen. She followed his gaze and then gasped. The viewscreen was almost completely filled with the aftermath of a star that had gone supernova. Colored dust and gases swirled in a chaotic mass and then started to coalesce right before their eyes.

“Is that -” she had started.

“A nebula forming,” he finished for her, a ridiculous grin spreading across his face. “We detected that the star was going to nova about a half an hour ago. We didn’t make it in time to see it actually happen, but when we got here and I saw that the remains looked like they were going to come together, I knew you needed to see it.”

“It’s beautiful,” she breathed. She had wandered down the stairs and onto the main part of the bridge to get a closer look. The swirling mass of gas and dust was constantly changing shape and color, each second bringing something new and wondrous onto the viewer. The outer parts of the cloud looked like they might dissipate eventually, but she agreed with Chakotay that the bulk of it was definitely forming a new nebula. And they were here, 70,000 light years from home, watching it happen. She wasn’t sure how long she stood there, one hand over her mouth as she watched the universe paint a new tattoo onto this section of the galaxy. Eventually, she had become aware of pressure on her elbow and someone leading her to her chair. She had plopped down into it gracelessly, but continued to stare in wonder at this rare, marvelous thing that they were witnessing.

“This is the most incredible thing I have ever seen,” she said finally. She turned to look at the Commander and found his face not trained on the viewscreen or the sensor readings like everyone else, but on her. She felt her mouth turn up in a half smile as she locked eyes with him. She leaned toward the center console slightly and he mirrored her action, closing the space between them.

“Thank you for waking me up,” she whispered. “I would have been so upset if I missed this.”

“Why do you think I refused to take no for an answer, Captain,” he returned. He smiled at her, dimples on full display. Their eyes remained fixed on each other for what felt like a year until she came to her senses. She leaned back into her chair quickly and forced her eyes to focus on the nebula again. His elbow was still propped up on the center console and so she heard him when he whispered, “It’s going to be the exact color of your eyes.”

She wakes with a start, sitting straight up in bed. The dream had been so vivid that she half expected to still be in her quarters on _Voyager_ , able to watch the stars fly by through the viewport. Instead, she is greeted by the apartment and its view of the new Golden Gate. She rubs her face absently and then rolls out of bed. She sits in the window seat in the bedroom, pulling her knees to her chest and stares up at the familiar constellations that she had thought she would never see again. Her reverie is disturbed by a noise behind her.

“Kathryn,” Chakotay mumbles, still half-asleep.

She stands up and comes back to their bed, sliding in beside him. He shifts himself so she can tuck herself up against him, faces centimeters from each other, her head resting on his outstretched arm.

“Where did you go,” he asks quietly.

“I had a dream.” That gets his attention, and his eyes open fully, taking in her face, examining it closely for tears or trauma in the half-light of the full moon. “We were back on _Voyager_ ,” she finishes.

“Good or bad?”

“Good,” she answers, with a small smile. “Just vivid. I needed to see the stars to be sure that we were really here.” He kisses her forehead gently and they lapse into silence. She thinks that he has fallen back to sleep when he speaks.

“Well, are you going to tell me what it was about?”

“It was that time that you woke me up in the middle of the night to watch that nebula form,” she says quietly.

“That is a good dream,” he agrees. “Watching it was incredible. It’s one of my favorite memories.”

“Mine too. Not just because of the nebula though.”

“No,” he asks. “What else makes it your favorite?”

“It’s when I realized that you were falling in love with me,” she answers. She remembers walking back to her quarters in a daze, sometime after his comment about her eyes. She had fallen into her bed still in her half put together uniform and spent the rest of the night trying to find some other explanation for what was going on between her and her first officer.

“That’s a long time after I had started, Kathryn,” he chuckles. 

“I had other things on my mind, Chakotay,” she shoots back. She kisses him slowly, still surprised to find that he really is here beside her in the bed that they share and not just a figment of her imagination. She pulls back from him, tracing the lines of his face with her finger. “When did you know then,” she asks. 

“When you were so interested in finding your animal guide.”

“You had known me for 4 weeks,” she returns, unbelievingly.

“I remember thinking that you were the strangest woman I had ever met.”

“Thanks.”

“Think about it, Kathryn. At the time, I was technically still a criminal. And you had not only combined our crews, but you had made me the first officer, which put me in charge of discipline, assigning duty shifts, crew evaluations for the whole crew - Starfleet and Maquis - and then to top it all off, you willingly came into my quarters and let yourself be completely defenseless with me. You had known me for four weeks, as well. You don’t think that kind of trust is pretty unusual in our circumstances in that time frame?” 

“I suppose it is,” she concedes, “but our whole situation was unusual.” 

“Not one captain in a hundred thousand would have done what you did, Kathryn. And I don’t think one in a million could have succeeded.” 

“The decision was obvious. It just made sense!” 

“Only to you,” he says with a grin. “I told you, you’re strange.” She pretends to push him away and he brings his arms together behind her back, squeezing her closer to him in sort of a horizontal bear hug. He lets her fight against him for a few seconds before he says, “does Starfleet surrender?” 

“Never!” The lethality of her response is tempered significantly by the fact that it’s muffled from where he has her head trapped against his chest. She squirms against him for a few more seconds before resorting to tickling. 

“Hey, no cheating,” he chuckles. “This is a test of strength and skill and I have bested you! I -“ His arms come apart as she gets to a particularly ticklish spot below his ribs, and suddenly she’s pushed him onto his back, pinning his shoulders to the bed with both hands. She raises an eyebrow and stares at him in mock seriousness.

“Does the Maquis surrender?” 

“Only to you, Kathryn.” They kiss again and she can’t help but marvel at the fact that every single time he kisses her, it feels like coming home. She slides off of him and tucks herself into his side, her head resting on his chest. 

“When did you know I was in love with you,” she asks quietly. 

“I suppose I didn’t really know until we got to New Earth,” he answers, tracing intricate patterns on her shoulder. “I had suspected for a long time, but you did a pretty good job of playing it close to the vest.” 

They lay in silence for awhile, listening to each other breathe. 

"Kathryn,” she hears him whisper into her hair, “are you still awake?”

“Mmmhmm,” she answers. 

“When did you know you loved me?” 

“When we docked at McKinley station three months ago,” she deadpans. 

“I’m serious.”

“When you took me skiing,” she answers, quietly after a long pause. “Our first Christmas in the delta quadrant.” She hears him laugh above her, the sound reverberating through his chest against her cheek.

“That’s an awful memory, Kathryn! I fell on you and you ended up dislocating your knee and breaking your foot in five places.”

“You wanted to know,” she returns. “That’s when I was sure. I was surprised you agreed to go at all because I knew how much you hate the cold and then you were so upset that everything went wrong. I remember lying in the sick bay with the Doctor lecturing us both about the importance of holodeck safety and you looked so miserable and I realized that all I wanted to do was kiss that sad look off your face.” She tilts her head to look up at him. “You stayed with me in sick bay all night. You told me you didn’t. In the morning, you said you left and went back to your quarters, but I woke up almost every hour and you were always there.” She smiles as she remembers that he had fallen asleep in a chair, his head and arms resting on her biobed. “At one point, I ran my fingers through your hair because I was a little drugged up and couldn’t help myself and you sighed and I almost came apart. That’s when I knew.” 

They lay in the dark, each reflecting on how the delta quadrant had both given them each other and kept them apart.

“I don’t want you to go tomorrow,” she hears him whisper.

“I know.”

“Please, don’t go, Kathryn.”

“Chakotay,” she starts, but he interrupts.

“Tell them you have space sickness. Or sudden onset claustrophobia. Or typhoid. Anything. Please.”

“It’s only two weeks.”

“And how long were you supposed to be gone when you came to get me, Gilligan?”

“I think the odds of getting marooned on the distant side of the galaxy twice in one lifetime have to be astronomical. And I didn’t watch as much television with Tom and B’Elanna as you did, but I’m fairly certain that you’re Gilligan in that scenario.”

“Kathryn.”

“I have to go, Chakotay. I don’t have a choice. Starfleet wants me on this mission. I don’t just get to say no.”

“I did.”

“They gave you a choice. You got to decide on the Academy. I don’t have that luxury.”

She sighs. They have had this conversation three times already. She knows that he is terrified to lose her and, if she’s honest, she’s afraid of losing him, as well. Afraid that the worst will happen and somehow she will end up dead or flung far from home and this time he won’t be there with her. But she has never let fear stop her before, and she has already decided that it won’t stop her now.

“Please tell me you understand,” she pleads. She doesn’t want to leave him on bad terms.

“Promise me that you are coming back.”

“I promise, Chakotay. Neither the Borg Queen nor the devil himself could keep me from you.” Their lips come together again and suddenly she’s pulling his clothes off and making love to him for the second time that evening. But this time it is different. There is something desperate and urgent in it, like tomorrow may never come and this may be the last time. Like she’s marking him as hers, and he is doing the same to her, as though giving each other pieces of themselves will ensure that they find each other again.

In the morning, breakfast is a quiet affair. They have reached an impasse in this argument and she knows there is really nothing more to say.

“Well, I should head out to the transport site,” she says finally. It is time for her to go.

“I want to walk you,” he replies.

“You don’t have to -“ she starts.

“Please, Kathryn.”

She looks into his eyes and then nods. He shoulders her away bag and laces his fingers with hers as they leave the apartment and take the short walk to Headquarters. Starfleet is transporting her and two other members of the diplomacy team to the shuttle that will take them to rendezvous with the _USS Oklahoma_. From there, it is a 3 day trip to the colony on Barradas II, where they will attempt to facilitate an end to the civil war during an 8 day cease fire that they have already negotiated with both sides. As they walk through the cool Bay morning, she can’t help but think how simultaneously weird and right it feels to be holding his hand while she is in uniform.

They arrive at the courtyard before anyone else. He places her bag on the ground next to her and reaches up to brush a stray strand of her hair behind her ear.

“I’ll comm you when we rendezvous with the _Oklahoma_ ,” she says to him, searching his eyes for a sign that he has accepted that she has to go.

“Anything that you’d like done while you’re gone? Replicator recalibrated? Carpets cleaned,” he asks, with a twinkle in his eye, one dimple showing in his half smile. She can’t help but smile back at him.

“Surprise me,” she answers, just like she had the last time he had said that to her. She offers him her hand and he takes it, but this time he pulls her to him, holding her tightly and kissing her breathless.

“I love you, Kathryn. Come back to me.”

“I love you too. And I promise,” she answers. He places one last kiss on her forehead and then walks out of the courtyard. She watches him until he is out of sight. He never looks back. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoping to wrap this up in one more chapter. Thanks for hanging with me and sorry for the slower update. I'm back to work after vacation and duty calls.


	7. Trials

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: depictions of terrorist violence including a bombing with casualties.

Kathryn sighs into her hands. She hasn’t been this bored in years.

They had arrived on the _Oklahoma_ three days ago and, at first, the thrill of being back on a starship had been all-encompassing. She had wondered what it said about her that she was most comfortable, most at home, millions of kilometers away from her home planet, shooting through the stars at speeds that her ancestors couldn’t have even begun to imagine. All that was missing to make it perfect in those first few hours were Chakotay and _Voyager_ itself. But the novelty had worn off quickly.

The first day had been spent in meetings with Admiral Ciroc and Lieutenant Ashmore, going over their strategy for hopefully ending the civil war that had been raging on Barradas II for nearly a decade. Both sides of the conflict were tired and had suffered heavy losses recently, and so she believed that they had significant cause to think that they might actually be able to make a ceasefire stick. Kathryn had been relieved to discover that Starfleet seemed to have chosen well in assigning the three of them to the same team, as their diplomacy styles and personalities seemed to mesh well together. They had strategized late into the night the first day, but had broken up by lunch the second. Their plan was solidly in place and there wasn’t much left to do until they could actually put boots on the ground.

While in the delta quadrant, Kathryn had never realized just how many things she had to do on _Voyager_. For seven years there had constantly been someone or something that required her attention. She was lucky that she had time at all to eat, sleep, or socialize. She had noticed the absence of these endless tasks since returning to Earth, but had always had Chakotay or one of the other Voyagers or her mother or countless other people or things to help her fill in the hours that normally would have been spent engrossed in reports or helping repair a plasma intake manifold. But she was a guest on this ship, merely a passenger to be ferried to a destination, and so there was nothing to do here except stare at the stars or the walls in the quarters she had been assigned.

And she is hopelessly, impossibly bored. It reminds her of the first month back on Earth when the _Voyager_ crew had been debriefed by Starfleet command. They are unpleasant memories and she prefers normally not to dwell on them. Here, she doesn’t have much of a choice.

There had been a parade when they got back to Earth. They had all worn their dress uniforms and been driven slowly through Market Street and down the Embarcadero, smiling and waving as crowds of people had turned up to see the crew who had defeated all the odds and returned from the far reaches of the galaxy. Admiral Patterson had told her that their return had been an incredible morale boost for a planet that had badly needed a win following the long war with the Dominion. The mayor had given her a key to the city and had named all the Voyagers sons and daughters of San Francisco.

The crowd had barely begun to disperse into the surrounding areas of the city to enjoy the carnival associated with the celebration before Starfleet had taken each and every one of her crew into custody. They had been loaded into transports and taken back to Headquarters en masse. Admiral Nechayev had been waiting for them.

“What’s the meaning of this, Admiral,” Kathryn had asked her, barely able to maintain the tiniest trace of respect in her voice. “My people were just rounded up like criminals at a celebration in our honor.”

“Standard procedure, Captain,” Nechayev had returned curtly. “We need to debrief your crew.”

“Surely nothing about this is standard, Admiral,” Chakotay had chimed in. She hadn’t even answered him, just glared in his direction and then started to address the crowd.

“Attention, please! I am Admiral Nechayev and I represent Starfleet Command. You are all hereby ordered to report for debriefing at times that have been assigned to you by the administration. Until our debriefings are over, you will be billeted here at the Academy. You will have no contact with each other -“

The crew had started to protest and Kathryn had heard people complaining, asking about how they were supposed to see their families and their friends. She had heard Tom ask loudly how he was supposed to have no contact with his wife and newborn. Over the noise, she had suddenly realized the situation for which these measures were standard procedure. This was how they treated crews suspected of the worst crimes in Starfleet - mutiny, murder, war crimes, and violations of the Prime Directive. Chakotay had grabbed her arm as he came to the same conclusion.

“Silence,” Nechayev had yelled. Kathryn had turned and given the crew a look that instructed them to do as they were told, bringing a disordered silence to the group. “You will have no contact with each other and all contact with outsiders - families, friends, or otherwise - will be monitored. When Starfleet decides that you have been debriefed to our satisfaction, then you will be allowed to leave. Have I made myself clear?” The Admiral had received silence as her answer. “I said, have I made myself clear?”

“Yes, Admiral,” she and Chakotay had replied in unison. The rest of the crew repeated the sentiment half-heartedly behind her. Security forces had shown up while the Admiral was talking.

“These men have your assignments for your quarters and will escort you to them. Anything that you need can be replicated in your rooms and you will find your scheduled report times for debriefing inside. Dismissed.” The crew had started to disperse as they were led away into one of the dorm buildings. The Academy was out of session for summer break, leaving the dorms available to house the crew.

“What exactly are we being accused of, Admiral,” Kathryn had asked, as soon as she felt that her question wouldn’t be overheard.

“What makes you think you are being accused of anything, Captain?”

“Because I know the regulations and measures like this are only taken when a crew is suspected of wrong doing,” she had snapped back. “I might have been in the delta quadrant for seven years, but I wasn’t born yesterday. This is an investigation, not a debriefing.”

“We can discuss it at your debriefing, Captain.” Nechayev had tried to walk away but Kathryn had grabbed her arm.

“Admiral, I demand to know what is going on. I’m entitled to know as the captain of my ship and you know it.” From behind her, she had felt Chakotay place his hand on the small of her back. The action had steadied her and she had released the Admiral’s arm.

“If you must know, Captain,” the Admiral had responded, her voice practically dripping with venom as she spat out her title, “the list is far too long to go into here. Suffice it to say that multiple violations of the Prime Directive, at least one count of mutiny, several counts of conduct unbecoming an officer, and one count of attempted murder will all be leveled at you or various other members of your crew. Not to mention the incalculable criminal charges facing all the members of the Maquis. I’d prepare yourself for court-martial, Kathryn.”

It had hit her like a slap in the face. All those communications with Starfleet in the last year, all the reassurances from Admirals Patterson, Paris, and Hayes that the Maquis would be treated as Starfleet, all of the things that her future self had told her, all of it had amounted to lies. She had delivered her people from the dangers of the delta quadrant into the waiting hands of bureaucrats who saw them all as threats. Nechayev had gone and left her and Chakotay in stunned silence. They had eventually been rounded up by the security forces and shown to their quarters. She and Chakotay had each been assigned to the same floor as the rest of the senior staff. They had all been assigned in such a way that there was an empty room between each of them and no one was directly across the hall either. A guard patrolled the hallway to ensure that they didn’t congregate. She had been relieved when she saw that they had at least put Tom, B’Elanna, and Miral in a room together.

She hadn’t slept at all that first night. She had just stared at the PADD in her hands, reading and re-reading the agenda that they had included along with the time and place to report. Her debriefing was scheduled to begin at 0800 and last until 1900. According to the agenda, they only planned to cover their first 4 or so months in the delta quadrant. If that timeline held, her debrief would take at least a month. If she hadn’t lost her mind in the delta quadrant, she would after a month of Admiral Nechayev drilling her about every single decision she made in the last seven years. She had been worried for her crew, as well. Surely their sessions wouldn’t be as long or as extensive but they had already been through so much and it seemed to be so unfair to put them through this instead of sending them off to their families.

After more cups of coffee than she would ever admit to, she had reported to the room listed on her PADD. Twenty minutes early, she sat outside in a chair drumming her fingers on her legs until she had willed herself to stop. She had always prided herself on her ability to show grace under pressure. While every single cell in her body had been screaming to pace the hall, do jumping jacks, cartwheel until she couldn’t see straight, she had remained sitting in the chair, looking to all the world like she was waiting for nothing more stressful than a bus.

At five minutes to eight, she had heard someone else enter the hallway and looked up to find Chakotay coming towards her. She stood up and he quickened his pace down the hall. He had almost gotten to her when one of the security guards stepped between them.

“No fraternization is allowed, Commander.”

“I was just going to say hello,” Chakotay had returned testily.

“It’s okay, Commander,” she had interjected, trying to stop the situation from escalating. “Good luck in there.”

“You too, Captain.”

Another guard had escorted him back down the hall to the room where he was scheduled to start his debriefing. They could still see each other and she had let herself stare at him until he felt her and looked up. Their eyes met and she had held her hand out towards him slightly, just like she used to across the console on the bridge. He had mimicked the action and while they were meters away and couldn’t actually touch, she had been comforted knowing that he was close and rooting for her. She hoped that he felt the same. She had dropped her hand quickly as she heard the doors to their rooms open.

“Captain Kathryn Janeway?” An ensign had poked his head out of the door as she stood up quickly.

“Present,” she had answered formally.

“Enter.” She had squared her shoulders and prepared to enter hell.

Her estimate had been close to perfect. Her debriefing had lasted 34 days. Fortunately, Admiral Nechayev had turned out to be in the minority at Starfleet when it came to her feelings about _Voyager_ , its captain, and its crew. That wasn’t to say that it hadn’t been a torturous month. Every single decision, every single interaction, every single first contact was dissected and analyzed in so much depth that by the end of each 11 hour session, even Kathryn was fairly convinced that all her choices had been bad ones. It had been a dark time in her life, perhaps the darkest since the Void or her father’s death, and she often returned to her bland dorm quarters to spend hours simply staring into nothing, feeling like she had boxed 10 rounds with a much larger opponent and regretting ever having been born.

The only bright spots had been when her debriefings occasionally included other people. Her sessions included each of the senior staff at least once, and getting to talk with them was refreshing for her soul, even if all they were able to do was fight to defend decisions they had made. Chakotay ended up in her sessions ten times. These were the best days. His reassuring presence on her left was such a comfort in its familiarity. She fought best on those days and came out of those sessions feeling like maybe not all of her decisions had been bad ones.

When it had all been said and done, the former Maquis had all been safe from prosecution and had been offered Starfleet commissions if they wanted them and almost every member of the original crew had been promoted at least one whole rank. She had been formally reprimanded 38 times, commended 61 times, and retroactively striped of rank for 2 weeks immediately following the incident with the _Equinox_. Then, in the most shocking thing that had happened to her since she had actually managed to get _Voyager_ through the transwarp conduit in one piece, they had promoted her. Vice Admiral Janeway.

Kathryn reaches up and feels one of the strange bars with three pips in the center that now adorn her uniform. It had been two months and she still isn’t used to having them on both sides of her neck or the extra weight and pressure from the bar itself. She checks the chronometer again - 1900 hours, ship time. She does some fast math and decides that 0600 isn’t too early for her to comm Chakotay back in San Fransisco. She dials his code and then grabs the console from the desk and carries it over to the sofa while it connects. She is just getting situated when she hears a moan.

“Kathryn, it’s 6 in the morning,” she hears him mumble. She looks down at the screen and bursts into laughter. He’s sitting in front of the console in their kitchen, wearing only his boxers with the comforter from their bed wrapped around his shoulders. His hair is standing up in three different directions and he can barely open his eyes to look at her. If she didn’t know any better, she would say that she had just roused a 5 year old boy and not a man of more than 50.

“Good morning to you too, sunshine.”

“You know I’m not a morning person,” he grumbles.

“You did fine when we were on _Voyager_ ,” she returns, still laughing a little about how put out he looks.

“Lives were at stake, Kathryn. I didn’t have a choice.” He frowns at her as she barely suppresses another laugh. “And my captain seemed to be able to run on nothing but coffee and hope and thought that sleep and food were for the weak. I had to adapt to survive!”

“Well, I’m sorry to have poked the bear then. If you want to go back to sleep, I can just call again later.” She sees his head snap up and his eyes suddenly seem sharper than they had a few seconds ago.

“What’s wrong,” he asks intensely.

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Yes, there is. You sound weird.”

“Maybe it’s the connection,” she offers. She has no idea how he does that. If she had a credit for every person that she fooled with her little white lies, she would never have to work another day in her life, but somehow Chakotay always seems to read her like an open book.

“Spill it, Admiral.”

“I just miss you.” It’s an honest statement. She misses him so much that it’s like a piece of herself is missing.

“I miss you, too,” he answers. “The apartment feels dead without you here. But I’m working on a surprise for when you get home.”

“Really? What kind of surprise?”

“The surprise kind, Kathryn.”

“That’s so funny, Chakotay,” she shoots back sarcastically.

“You’ll get no hints from me, fun-wrecker! Last time I gave you a hint, you were wearing the sweater from my mom ten minutes later. The hint hadn’t even said anything about where it had been hidden!”

“Fine,” she concedes. “Keep your secrets. It’s more fun to figure them out when you think I have no way of puzzling them out anyway.” A companionable silence falls between them.

“What else is wrong, Kathryn?” Chakotay is still watching her intently.

“Nothing,” she answers, rubbing the spot between her eyes that always seems to hurt when she is stressed out.

“Is there something going on with the negotiations?”

“No, I think we have a good plan in place and I think that there is a pretty decent chance that we could make some really lasting change down there.”

“Then what is it?”

“I’m just bored, Chakotay. You know what always happens if I have too much time to think.” She can’t help but frown sadly. Her penchant towards melancholy has been a thorn in her side for as long as she can remember.

“You’re fixating, aren’t you?”

“Only a little,” she answers, quietly.

“I knew I should have come with you.”

“How would you have managed that? I think they would have noticed if my away bag was large enough and heavy enough to contain a grown man.”

“I have Maquis tricks that you have never seen, Kathryn.” He raises a conspiratorial eyebrow and she laughs in spite of herself. He always makes her feel better.

“I’ll be better in the morning. We are supposed to arrive planetside at 0600.”

“Why does Starfleet always insist on starting the day so ridiculously early,” he grumbles.

“Diplomacy waits for no man,” she quips back. The rest of their conversation passes quickly. They speak about everything and nothing and by the time she signs off an hour later, she feels 10 kilos lighter than before she had called. She falls into bed and has her first good nights rest since boarding the _Oklahoma_.

The first four days of negotiations go well. Both sides are cautious and mistrustful of each other, but they seem to be able to see that the fighting that has been going on for the last nine years hasn’t done anyone any favors. A small skirmish on the outskirts of the capital city sets them back some on day five, but even then, both sides still seem to be committed to peace. It all falls apart on day six.

A cell of rebels determined to continue the fighting set off a string of bombs throughout the capital and in every major city on the continent. Kathryn watches in horror as the reports roll in to the negotiations headquarters they had established on the surface. The number of dead and wounded are in the thousands and everyone knows that the missing will continue to inflate that number as they are dug out of the rubble. Catastrophe. _That’s one way to end negotiations_ , she thinks disappointedly. She feels someone appear at her shoulder.

“We are being ordered to evacuate, Admiral.” Lieutenant Ashmore looks more than a little terrified. His skin has taken on a pale green color and she is surprised to realize that this must be his first time in an active war zone.

“Not surprising, Lieutenant,” she replies. “It’s unlikely that we will be able to make progress here after this.” It’s such a shame. They had been so close.

“The Lieutenant Commander over there is here to escort us to the shuttle. Apparently there is too much interference from debris in this area for the ship to get a transporter lock.”

“Lead the way.” They haven’t taken two steps before the building is rocked by an explosion nearby. “I suggest we run, Lieutenant. That felt way too close for comfort!”

A second explosion causes the building to sway even more, almost putting Kathryn off balance. She manages to stay on her feet and meet the waiting officer.

“We have to get you out of here, Admiral,” he yells over the noise of sirens and falling pieces of buildings and vehicles outside.

“No kidding,” she yells back. Checking to see that Ashmore and Ciroc are still with them, they take off as quickly as possible and head for the exit.

They emerge into a war zone. The air is thick with debris and a white haze has started to cover every surface, collecting on their clothes and in their hair as soon as they exit the building. Staying low, their small convoy starts moving through the damaged streets towards the rendezvous point. They are within sight of the shuttle when it happens.

“There she is,” the Lieutenant Commander says, turning back to look at her over his shoulder. She has only a split second to register the surprise on his face and turns to look behind her when she sees it as well. It’s a man, standing on the other side of the street and 30 meters behind them. In his hands is a bomb.

There is no time to speak or react at all. One second, she is looking at the bomb in his hands and the next she can feel herself flying through the air. She doesn’t remember landing. She comes to as the Lieutenant Commander is shaking her shoulder. She realizes that she doesn’t even know his name. Before she can make herself ask, she is suddenly blinded by incredible pain. There is a loud noise that she can hear even over the ringing in her ears and she suddenly realizes that it’s her. She is screaming.

“Admiral! Admiral! Stay with me!” She finally stops screaming, not because it doesn’t hurt anymore but because she is having trouble drawing air into her lungs. _They are filling with blood_ , her brain offers helpfully.

He is yelling at someone else now and she can feel more hands on her. They pick her up by her broken leg and she starts screaming again but it is short lived as she starts coughing up the blood that had indeed been filling up her lungs. She registers that they are in the shuttle now and feels it lift off. Someone is still with her and she realizes that she has to tell them before it’s too late.

“Please,” she starts, but it is so quiet and gurgled. She coughs again, spraying blood through the cabin, but it clears her lungs enough to speak. “Please, please tell him -“ She stops as the exertion of speaking is too much.

“Tell who, Admiral,” the person answers.

“Chakotay,” she chokes out. “Tell him sorry. Broke. Promise. Please.” _I’m not going to make it back to him_ , is the last thought that registers in her mind before everything goes dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm literally going to stop trying to say that I know when this thing will end. We get there when we get there, I guess. Thanks for hanging in with me so far!


	8. Remedies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Mature content in this chapter.

He was joking when he asked her if she wanted anything done in their apartment. He had wanted to make her smile and to remind her and himself that they had been through far worse things and come out on the other side. But when Chakotay returns to their empty home, all he feels is her absence. Their rooms feel strangely lifeless without her in them. He realizes suddenly that this is the longest that they will have been apart since they went through debriefing after their sudden reappearance in the alpha quadrant. He shakes his head as he tries not to dwell on that unpleasant experience and crosses the kitchen to plop himself on the couch. He places his hand between the cushions and finally manages to retrieve the PADD that she had pulled out of his hands last night as she had led him to bed and tries to focus on his lesson plans for the new semester. 

He had been offered his own ship when they had reinstated his commission and promoted him to captain after the hellish debriefing had been over, but he had turned it down immediately. The last thing he wanted after 7 years was to go back out there. He loved the stars and he loved exploring - meeting new peoples and being exposed to new cultures - but he knew that what he needed was to be firmly on the ground somewhere, at least for a little while. He had been able to tell that the panel was shocked and offended when he had turned them down in practically the same breath that they had made the offer. Only Admiral Paris seemed to see and understand, and it was he that suggested returning him to the Academy. Nechayev had been against it, of course, but Patterson had quickly backed the suggestion and the other Admirals subsequently agreed. Thus, he would be teaching 1st and 2nd year Tactics, 4th year Game Theory, and a 4th year elective Anthropology seminar when the semester started in 3 weeks. 

He manages to focus for most of the day, making significant headway on his lesson plans and putting the final touches on his syllabi. He is uploading the last of his grading rubrics to the Academy server when he realizes that his stomach is growling loudly. It’s 1600 already and he hadn’t had any lunch. He also realizes that Kathryn never commed him. They should have rendezvoused with the _Oklahoma_ hours ago. Ignoring his stomach, he grabs the console from the side table and sees that there is a new message in his inbox from her. 

**Chakotay,**  
 **Apparently the comm system on board is down for a refit since we are going to be so close to Romulan space. They tell me that it should be back up and running sometime tonight, so I’ll check in with you then. Just wanted to let you know that we had made it on board safely. I had almost forgotten how beautiful the stars look at warp. All that is missing up here is you. Talk soon.**  
 **I love you,**  
 **Kathryn**

He smiles to himself as he reads her letter. He knows that she has missed the stars terribly since their return. They seem to call to her more loudly than they do to him. On many nights he finds her as he had last night, tucked into the window seat, staring up into the galaxy as she communes with her stars, drinking in their light and absorbing knowledge that they seem to impart only to her. The window seat had been the very first thing that she had commented on when he had shown her the apartment for the first time. 

Realizing that he likely has a few hours until Kathryn will be available to talk, he puts the console on the coffee table and walks to the kitchen to make himself some dinner. It’s early, but he did skip lunch and it gives him time to prepare something by hand. As he chops the vegetables for the ratatouille, he can’t help but think back to Kathryn’s first night of freedom after the debriefings. 

Chakotay had been at Tom and B’Elanna’s when he found out that her debriefing was finally over. Admiral Paris had commed his son to give him the good news that Kathryn was safe - more than safe, promoted. The _Voyager_ Tribunal was officially over. Chakotay and B’Elanna had hugged quickly before Tom’s whooping had woken up Miral.

“We have to celebrate,” Tom had said loudly to make himself heard over the baby. “We should contact everyone who is still here and get together!”

“Good idea,” Chakotay had agreed. “It will be good for the captain. She needs to see everyone again. I can’t believe that they kept us all apart for this long.” He lapsed into reflection. He had been in one of Kathryn’s debriefing sessions 2 days ago. What he had seen had scared him. She had that look in her eyes again - the same one that she had gotten after their third week in the Void. It was the look of a wounded animal, but there was also a certain resignation to it, like the wound was mortal and she knew she was dying. It had scared the hell out of him the first time and it was no different this time. Kathryn Janeway needed human contact and she needed distractions, otherwise her own guilt and self-hatred ate her apart from the inside. He had only hoped that they weren’t too late. 

“I’m going to run home and I’ll comm her from there. They should have opened up her line by the time I get back to my apartment. You guys start calling everyone that you know is still on world. Pick a place and a time, and let me know. I’ll get her there.” Chakotay had headed for the door. 

“We should go to Sandrine’s,” Tom had said, as he followed him through the living room. “The real one! The captain loved that program and it would be fun for everyone to get to see it.” B’Elanna had caught up to them, now holding a sleeping Miral in her arms. 

“What’s this about Sandrine’s?”

“Tom thinks that’s where we should all meet tonight,” Chakotay had answered quietly, trying to not wake the baby. 

“That’s a great idea! We’ll need to see if your parents can watch Miral.”

“I’ll add them to the list of people we need to talk to,” Tom had replied with a grin. “We’re getting the gang back together!” Chakotay couldn’t help but smile too as he had run down their front steps. 

He had commed her as soon as he got home. He had been released from his debriefing two days ago and had only signed his lease yesterday, so the place was still a mess, but he had found a spot in the apartment that didn’t look like a war zone and made the call. She didn’t answer and so he had left a message.

“Kathryn,” he had started, “I just heard that they have finally released you. From what I understand, you also got some good news. The Voyagers want to celebrate and so Tom and B’Elanna are organizing something for us tonight. I’m attaching a view receipt to this message and I’ll be there to pick you up exactly an hour after I get notified that you have watched this.” He had paused, as what he was about to say next was hard. “I know that you might not want to do anything, but as your friend, I’m telling you that you need to let us do this for you. I promise I’ll bring you back home as soon as you like. I’ll see you soon.” He had pressed send and then exhaled loudly. He honestly had no idea what he would find when he got to her temporary quarters. It was very possible that he would have to pick her up and carry her out kicking and screaming. He had sat for a few seconds and then punched in another number on the console. It had rung for a few moments and then the face of Gretchen Janeway had appeared. 

“Well, hello Chakotay,” she had said in surprise, “I wasn’t expecting to hear from you!”

“Hello, Mrs. Janeway,” he had replied. “Kathryn’s hearing is over.” 

“Yes, Owen Paris just commed me to let me know.”

“We’re having a get together at a bar in Marseille - Chez Sandrine - tonight and I think that it would be good for Kathryn if you were there.”

“I’ll be there,” she had replied emphatically. She had paused for second as though she was making a decision about something. “How is she,” she had finally managed. 

“From what I saw two days ago, she’s been better.” She had nodded in understanding and they had lapsed into silence, each thinking about Kathryn. 

“What time are we meeting,” she had asked eventually, snapping both of them back into the present. 

“I’ll let you know as soon as I do.”

“See you soon then.” 

It had shocked him the first time that Kathryn’s mother contacted him. It was at the end of their first week of debriefings and he had just finished recording a message for Sekaya when a new message had flashed on his view screen. It had been Gretchen Janeway. She told him that she was worried about her daughter. She had sent no fewer than 10 messages to Kathryn and had only received one response. She told him that Kathryn had said in one of her letters from the delta quadrant that he was her best friend and so, in spite of her misgivings about his past with the Maquis, she had contacted him in the hope that he could tell her what was going on with her eldest child. They had continued to exchange messages for the rest of his debrief. He would fill her in as much as he could about how Kathryn was faring on the days that he saw her. It had quickly become clear to them both that they were now unlikely allies in securing the mental health and wellbeing of Kathryn Janeway. By the end of the month, he had also discovered that he truly liked Mrs. Janeway, and he believed that she had come to like and trust him as well. 

After he hung up with Gretchen, he had checked and seen that his message to Kathryn still hadn’t been viewed. He had decided to hop in the shower and then clean the apartment up a little. One hour later, the console had chimed. She had seen the message. He had quickly contacted Tom and told him to get the word out that Operation Celebration was a go for 1400 hours San Fransisco time. It would be 2200 in Marseille, which would mean that they would have four hours before Sandrine’s would close for the evening. He had forwarded the time along to Gretchen in Indiana and then gone into his room to change. 

Precisely an hour after his console had chimed, he had knocked on her door. When she opened it, she had almost taken his breath away. She had been wearing a dress that was dark blue at the top and became progressively lighter as it ran toward her knees. The gauzy material was flecked with silver and made it look like the night sky had chosen to clothe her itself. Her neck was bare above the sweetheart neckline and she had lightly curled her shoulder length hair so that it surrounded her face is gentle waves. She was far too thin, and her eyes still had that haunted look but he could see that there was something else in them as well. 

“Kathryn,” he had breathed. “You look lovely.”

“Thank you,” she had said with a smile. “It feels good to be out of uniform.” They had stayed in the doorway for a few seconds as he continued to take her in. 

“You didn’t think I’d be ready, did you,” she had asked quietly. 

“I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect,” he admitted. “I know that you’ve been -“ He had paused, looking for the right word. “Unsettled,” he had finished, at the same time that she offered the word “depressed.” They stood in slightly awkward silence for a moment. “I’m glad you decided that you wanted to come,” he had said. 

“Me too.” She had smiled her crooked smile at him. “So where are we going? Am I dressed appropriately?”

“It’s a surprise,” he had returned, with a smile of his own. “And yes. The answer to whether you should be wearing that dress will always be yes.”

She had blushed up to her hairline.

Kathryn had guessed that it was Sandrine’s as soon as he told the technician at the transporter station that they were going to Marseille but he had convinced her to act surprised when they got there. A good portion of the crew had shown up, filling the tiny bar well past capacity but no one seemed to care. Everyone had clapped as Kathryn entered the bar and her face had lit up as she walked through the crowd, handing out hugs and clasping hands with people she hadn’t seen in the month that had felt like 10 years. When she had seen her mother, she had stopped dead in her tracks from shock before hugging her so tightly, that he thought she would never let go. 

Chakotay had stayed close to her all night, watching her interact with this family that fate had chosen for them. She had smiled and laughed with them, reminiscing about good times and looking at new photos that various people had brought with them of family members and friends that had filled the stories they had told for seven years. With each interaction, he had watched as the burden that she carried on her slim shoulders seemed to become lighter and lighter. He had seen it registering in her eyes - she had done it. She had gotten these people home. 

He had watched her for signs that she wanted to leave but she was still going strong when Sandrine threw them all out at 2 am. They had filtered to the transporter station together and she had said goodbye to each and every member of the crew that had come out. Her mother had been the last to leave and Kathryn had raised an eyebrow at him when Gretchen had pulled him into a hug as well before she stepped on the pad and disappeared back to Indiana. Finally, they had been the last two left. 

“Ready to go home,” he had asked her. 

“Back to San Fransisco? Yes,” had been her cryptic reply. 

They had rematerialized stateside to find it still daylight in California. They had decided to walk off some of the drinks and strolled through the Presidio before heading down to the beach to watch the sunset together. As darkness had finally descended, he had known that he didn’t want her to go back to her awful temporary quarters. 

“Come see my new place,” he had offered quietly. “It’s not far from here.”

“That sounds nice.” 

He had given her a quick tour when they arrived but she had been absolutely enraptured by the window seat in the bedroom.

“I cannot believe that you got an apartment with a window seat,” she had exclaimed.

“Is it a rare find,” he had asked, confused by her enthusiasm.

“I suppose it is,” she had answered, reflectively. “But, more to the point, I have always wanted one! Ever since I was small and my mother read me _Jane Eyre_. Jane hides in a window seat from her cousins and I remember thinking that it would be useful to hide from Phoebe when I wanted to read. I’ve never forgotten.”

“Well, you can come visit this one anytime you like,” he had offered. 

She had treated him to a full, true smile and it had felt like sunshine after weeks of rain. They had ended up on the sofa in his living room, discussing the many developments in the lives of their former crew until suddenly it was one in the morning. 

“I should go,” she had said, but she had made no move to stand. 

“Or you could stay,” he had offered. The silence had stretched between them for what felt like a lifetime and he could see her thinking, formulating, trying to decide what he meant. He had decided to make it clear. He had pushed himself closer to her on the sofa and kissed her gently, one hand on her cheek, the other on her tiny waist. “Stay. Stay with me,” he had repeated. 

“Yes,” she had answered, before she kissed him back. Her kiss had been stronger, more insistent, as she had threaded her hands through his hair, holding him to her, like she was afraid that if she let go of him he would disappear. He had pulled her into his lap and she had wrapped her legs around his waist, each of them now desperately trying to get closer. She had let go of his hair to trail her hands down his back, tugging his shirt out of his pants so that she could run her hands up his back and chest, causing him to gasp and break their kiss. 

They had stared into each other’s eyes for a moment and that’s when he had realized that the other thing he had seen in her eyes that afternoon was hope. Hope that he still loved her, as he had promised that he would. Hope that he would want her, even after everything that they had been through in the last seven years. Hope that neither time, nor circumstance, nor distance had dulled the feelings that they had admitted to each other only twice. He had seen it there still, burning brightly past the pain that the last month had put there, and he knew then that he had to tell her. 

“I love you, Kathryn,” he had whispered, brushing her lips again. 

“Still?” She had looked into his eyes, still unsure, still afraid that her hope was for nothing. 

“Still and always,” he had answered.

“I love you, too,” she had breathed. She had started laughing joyously. 

“What’s so funny?”

“I finally get to say it. I love you, Chakotay. I’ve loved you for such a long time.”

He had kissed her again, tasting the words on her tongue and believing that he would never hunger for anything else again. He had ripped his lips from hers and started trailing kisses down her jaw, toward her ear, humming in appreciation as a moan of pleasure escaped her. He had kissed and nipped down her neck to her chest, leaving wet marks behind on the swell of her breasts above her dress. 

“Take me to bed,” he had heard her beg, and an answering roar of triumph sounded in his chest. His Kathryn. Finally. He had slid his hands under her thighs and stood up, holding her to him, and walked her into the bedroom. He had pressed her against the wall as they continued to explore each other, her hands running up his chest to pull his shirt over his head. His hands had kneaded her thighs, moving up until they were so close to the center of her that was begging for his attention, while he had continued his assault on her neck with his tongue. Finally, she hadn’t been able to take anymore. He had felt her hands knot themselves in his hair as she pulled him back up to her mouth and placed a searing kiss on his lips. “I said bed, Chakotay,” she had ordered breathlessly.

“Aye, Kathryn.” She had lightly bitten his neck in response to his insolence.

He had put her down in front of the bed and undressed her slowly, relishing the feel of the zipper of her dress sliding down her back, and watching it slide off of her to pool at her feet. Her underthings had followed and he had taken a step back from her to admire her the way that nature had intended. 

“You are so beautiful,” he had husked, his voice made low with desire. She had blushed again and he couldn’t stop himself from laying her on the bed to kiss her all over. He had nipped and kissed his way down her chest, paying special attention to her breasts, then placed chaste gentle kisses on each of her ribs that had become much too easy to count. He had trailed his tongue down her stomach and over scars that were far too numerous from missions gone wrong, coming so close to the parts of her that he had known were desperate for attention, then backing away, prolonging the agony. Finally, he had nestled his head between her thighs and had kissed and sucked and licked until he had felt her come undone under his tongue, screaming his name. It had been like his soul was on fire. 

Her hands had been in his hair and he had felt her pull him up her body until she could kiss him again. She had made quick work of his pants and boxers, pushing them down his thighs so that he could kick them off. He had felt her part her thighs beneath him, lining them up and he had propped himself up on his elbows above her. 

“Are you sure, Kathryn,” he had asked at the last minute. It had suddenly registered that their relationship was moving rather rapidly from nothing to everything. Any faster and they’d be at warp.

“Yes,” she had answered. “I love you, Chakotay. I think we’ve waited long enough. I want to love each other.” She had rolled her hips beneath him, sliding herself along his length and he hadn’t been able to wait any longer. He had pressed himself into her, feeling her slick heat engulf him, as she gasped. He had gone slowly, giving her time to adjust, until finally he was completely lost in her. 

“Is this okay?” He had placed kisses in the corner of her mouth and up her jaw to her temple. “I’m not hurting you?”

“No, it’s perfect,” she had breathed. “It’s just been awhile.” He had left them together for a little while, just joined, slightly rolling his hips while they kissed until he had felt the pressure for more building between them. They had started moving together, slowly at first and then increasing their pace as each sought the release they were looking for. He had hung on until she had found it and then hurtled over the edge with her, knowing in that moment that he would never really find solid ground again. She had taken him with her into the stars once more. 

She had curled up next to him after, and started to doze in his arms as he drew patterns on her back and shoulder. He had almost been asleep himself, when he had heard her say something.

“What did you say,” he had asked into the darkness. 

“Home,” she had repeated, as she had stroked a hand over his chest and then had fallen immediately into a deep sleep. 

  
Chakotay is brought back to the present by the console chiming. _Kathryn_ , he thinks, with a grin. She always seems to know when he is thinking of her. He pulls the console off the coffee table and sits it in his lap as he answers it. 

“Hello,” he says with a smile. 

“Hello,” she smiles back. “Did you get my message earlier? Apparently Starfleet thinks there is a good chance that the Romulans will want to take the opportunity to intercept our comm system, since we will be only a few lightyears from their space.” She rolls her eyes dramatically. “As though a ship like the _Oklahoma_ would be carrying any classified data.” He laughs at her reaction. Since she is so good at keeping her emotions in check when it comes to protocol, when she decides to give them free rein it’s always shocking. 

“I did get your message. And you never know, Kathryn. Maybe that’s the ruse that Starfleet is running. All critical, super classified information is being kept in the databanks of a 40 year old starship, months away from mothballs, running ferry trips to the border of Federation space.” 

“No one but a Romulan could come up with an idea like that,” she laughs. “Or, perhaps, a Maquis.” She raises an eyebrow at him. “Are you working for the enemy, Mr. Chakotay?”

“You pegged me, Admiral. That’s been my ploy all along.” He grins at her and sees that she is positively beaming back. “How is it being back on a ship?”

“Amazing,” she answers immediately. “I have only three complaints.”

“Only three? Well you have only been on board for 9 hours. I’m sure there will be time for more.” She glares at him through the screen and suddenly he realizes what it must have been like for all those aliens in the delta quadrant that had received that look.

"Do you want to hear what they are or not?”

“I’m all ears.” 

“Number one: their coffee is horrendous. Not quite as bad as a Neelix ‘better than coffee’ substitute, but still awful. Number 2: it’s not _Voyager_. I feel like I’m cheating on my boyfriend being up here. And most important, number 3: there’s no you.” She looks at him through the screen wistfully. 

“Well, you will just have to hurry back then. Because it’s hell here without you. You know, I was actually just thinking about the night you moved in.”

“Oh, really,” she had said, raising her eyebrows and licking her lips slightly. “What parts exactly?” 

“Bridge to Admiral Janeway,” he hears through the comm on her side, before he can reply. 

“Janeway,” she says, as she taps her badge. 

“The captain would like to see you in the ready room, if possible, Admiral.”

“I’ll be right there. Janeway out.” She frowns slightly. 

“What do you think the captain wants,” he asks her. 

“I’m not sure. But I better let you go. I’ll comm you again tomorrow. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he replies, and then she’s gone. 

Chakotay puts the console back on the coffee table and stretches his neck and shoulders. He knows that he spent too much time in this one spot today. He will have to make sure he does something more physical tomorrow. That’s when the idea strikes him like an epiphany. He heads into the bedroom and grabs his tricorder and starts scanning for dimensions. He _will_ have a surprise for her when she gets home after all. 

The next eight days pass slowly. He finishes his prep-work for the semester and then spends all of his time working on the surprise for Kathryn. He realizes that he had forgotten how good it felt to work with his hands, to see the material yielding to your will and know that this final amazing thing is all due to you. He is just getting ready for bed on the 9th day of her mission - the 6th day of their negotiations - when he hears the console chirp. _That’s weird_ , he thinks. _Kathryn said she would call in the morning._ He answers and finds himself looking into the face of an Admiral, but it isn’t Kathryn. 

“Admiral Patterson,” he says, by way of greeting.

“Captain Chakotay, I need you to listen to me very closely. There has been an incident on Barradas II.” He feels his blood run cold. 

“What kind of incident, Admiral?”

“The explosive kind. A massive bombing attack by a cell of freedom fighters not ready for peace. Our negotiation team was caught in the crossfire. Ciroc and Ashmore didn’t make it. Kathryn is in critical condition on the _Oklahoma_.” The admiral is still talking but Chakotay can’t hear him over the loud roaring in his ears. It’s like being underwater, tossed in a whirlpool that is so loud that he can’t even hear himself think. Yelling brings him back to reality. 

“Captain!”

“How could you let this happen,” he says, his voice dangerously low. 

“Chakotay, I know that you are angry. You have every right to be angry. But right now, Katie needs you. Do you understand?” 

He nods slowly, swallowing his anger down, but vowing to revisit it. 

“Good,” Patterson continues. “Get dressed. In two minutes, you will be transported to the _Enterprise._ I’ll meet you there. The _Oklahoma_ is already on its way back and we will meet them in the middle in a little over 24 hours.”

“I’ll be ready,” he answers and then the comm goes dead. 

It is the longest two minutes of his life. He gets dressed and surveys the half-finished surprise project. He isn’t even sure if it will matter anymore. _How could we make it all the way through the delta quadrant, through the Kazon and the Borg and the Hirogen and countless other obstacles and dangers, to lose each other to something as foolish as a civil war we aren’t even a part of? How is that fair?_ He slams his fist into the wall of the kitchen and watches his knuckles crack and bleed against the brick. Strangely, the pain centers him and as he dematerializes into the transporter beam his last thoughts are of Kathryn. _Please don’t let me be too late. Please don’t let her die._


	9. Wars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Some gore in this chapter

When Kathryn opens her eyes, she discovers that she is in her parents’ house in Indiana. She is standing just inside the door, in their front hallway, but she doesn’t remember coming inside, or even how she got here.

“Hello,” she calls into the silent house. “Mom? Phoebe? Anybody home?”

She wanders through to the kitchen, but finds it empty as well. She realizes then that the house isn’t completely silent. There is a barely perceptible commotion that she registers, like a loud party going on in a room far away from her. She tries to follow the noise but finds that its volume doesn’t change no matter where she goes in the house. Pushing it out of her mind, she opens the door to her father’s study and stops dead in her tracks. Someone is sitting in his chair. She can just make out the toe of a shoe past the arm, where the person must have one leg crossed over the other. The high back of the chair otherwise hides the intruder. 

“Excuse me, but no one is supposed to be in here,” she says indignantly, striding into the study. The chair spins around to face her and she is frozen once more. “Admiral?” She stares into the familiar face of her future self, sitting in her father’s favorite chair. She is smoking one of his cigars. 

“Captain,” she returns. “Or should I say ‘Admiral,’ as well?” 

Kathryn absently brushes her fingers against the bar on her neck and is shocked when they come away wet. _Blood_ , she thinks, as she stares at her hand. She looks down and discovers that she is in a uniform that looks like it’s been to hell and back. It is full of holes and burns all across her front and one of the legs has been shredded beyond recognition. It is covered in blood that is still wet, but as far as she can tell, she isn’t bleeding. She can see most of one of her legs through her ruined slacks and it looks completely uninjured. _That doesn’t make any_ _sense_ , her brain insists. _If your pants look like that, then that leg should look like ground beef._

“What’s going on, Admiral,” she asks. “What is this place?”

“It’s dad’s study, Kathryn. Surely you recognize it.”

“You know what I mean. None of this makes any sense. There’s no one in the house, my uniform is covered in blood and looks like it’s fresh out of the demilitarized zone, and you’re here and - correct me if I’m wrong - but you and I both know that you’re dead.”

“Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost.”

“Dante, _Inferno_ , Canto I,” Kathryn answered. “So what? Is this supposed to be hell? Is that what you’re telling me, Admiral?”

“Just making conversation, Kathryn.” An uneasy silence settles between them, punctuated only by the quiet din that she can still hear from somewhere and the sound of the Admiral as she inhales from the cigar in her hand. 

“So I stop drinking coffee, flaunt the temporal prime directive like it’s a city ordinance against jaywalking, destroy my friendship with Chakotay, and apparently start smoking cigars in your future. Anything else you’d like to tell me to make me feel like more of a stranger to myself?”

“How is Chakotay,” the Admiral asks. “And I don’t smoke cigars. I just figured that I would try one since I was here and, you know, cancer can’t kill you if you’re already dead.”

“So this is hell?” She receives only silence as her answer. She sighs and presses her fingers between her eyes, rubbing them along her right eyebrow in a futile attempt to relieve the headache that has started to bloom there. “And he’s fine. Or at least, he was the last time we talked.”

“Tell me what happened after you got home.”

“I don’t know why that’s relevant to this - ” Kathryn starts before the Admiral cuts her off. 

“Humor an old lady.”

“You want me to humor myself?” She can feel her eyebrows raise so high that they are practically in her hair.

“What happened when you got home?”

“They threw us a party for the PR and then rounded us up like criminals, Admiral. They launched a hellish inquisition that they called a debriefing. Mine lasted for 34 days. Then they released us and tried to pretend like none of it ever happened. It was nothing like what you experienced,” she snaps. “Oh, well, if I’m honest, they did promote me, so I guess it was something like what you experienced.” The sarcasm is practically dripping from her lips. 

“And then?”

“And then, what,” she explodes. “Why don’t you tell me exactly what you are looking for, Admiral, because then maybe we can move on and you can tell me what the hell is actually happening to me.”

The Admiral stands and strides across the study until they are standing toe to toe. 

“Don’t take that tone with me,” she says dangerously. 

“You’re me,” Kathryn says, irritated by the ploy. “You can’t intimidate _me_.” Silence falls again as they stare into each others eyes, neither willing to back down. Finally, the Admiral turns away. Kathryn is unnerved when her future self reaches up and rubs her forehead the exact same way that she had done a few minutes ago. _God, I hate time travel_ , she thinks. 

“You and Chakotay are still friends, correct,” the Admiral finally tosses into the silence. 

“Yes.”

“You didn’t fight when you returned home?”

“No.”

“What did happen?”

“I don’t see how that is any of your business.” Kathryn is extremely mad now and her words have turned icy. “And I’m done talking to you. Don’t tell me where we are. I’ll find a way out myself.” She turns on her heel and starts to walk out when she hears the Admiral from behind her. 

“I think it’s death’s waiting room.”

Kathryn freezes. Turning slowly back around, she sees that the Admiral has crossed back over to sit down in the chair again. 

“What did you say,” she asks, sure that she misheard. 

“I think this is death’s waiting room. I’ve been here for a while. It’s like they don’t know what to do with me. I’m dead but I’m not supposed to be. I died when I was 72, but in the year that I turned 42. I think I’ve managed to thoroughly confuse everyone.”

“Death’s waiting room,” Kathryn repeats back to her, still unsure that she has heard correctly. 

“Yes.” 

“That is absolute nonsense.” 

“You would think so,” the Admiral agrees. “And, yet - ” She forgoes completing the sentence and simply gestures to their surroundings like they present the cause for her argument without needing to be articulated. After more silence, the Admiral speaks again. “So tell me what happened with Chakotay. You said you were still friends. Are you close? Did he return to his planet to help with the rebuilding?” 

“No, he stayed in San Fransisco. He is going to teach at the Academy in the fall.” The Admiral looks at her expectantly. Kathryn sighs as she realizes that her future self will not let the subject lie. “We are together now. Romantically,” she clarifies. 

“I can’t believe it worked,” Kathryn hears the Admiral whisper.

“What do you mean 'it worked'? You planned this,” she asks, indignantly. “You sent us back to the alpha quadrant when you did because you thought that we would become a couple? You told me that I needed to follow your plan to save his life!”

“You did,” the Admiral answers. “He would have died on that away mission in five years. But he and I ceased to be friends several years prior. The transwarp conduit was the best choice to get you home - to save his life - but I also knew that the fight that we had that ended our friendship hadn’t happened yet, so I gambled and hoped that getting you home before that could occur would significantly change the outcome. Unfortunately, from the state of your uniform, it looks like fate had other ideas.”

“You cannot tell me that I suddenly believe in fate in my twilight years,” Kathryn begins. Her headache has moved to encompass the back of her head as well and it’s becoming distracting. 

“Fate, the immortal universe, whatever you want to call it. It must feel that it is owed a soul. Since Chakotay will live now, it claimed you instead.”

“What are you talking about,” Kathryn asked waspishly. _I don’t have time for this._

“The universe is taking its due. It is all about balance.” The Admiral reaches forward and places a chess piece onto either side of the old fashioned scale on the desk. “We removed a life from the balance, and so another one is owed. It’s not complicated, Kathryn.” She removes a piece from one side, watching the scale over-balance and then replaces it to bring it back into harmony. “Oh, and if you ever refer to me as being in ‘my twilight years’ again, you’ll regret ever having been born.” 

“Not only is that nonsense, it doesn’t even logically work with your theory. I’m not dead.”

“Aren’t you?” The Admiral raises an eyebrow and looks up at her. “How did you get here?”

Kathryn is silent for several seconds as she wracks her brain, trying to remember how she got to the house. “I don’t - I’m not sure,” she finally finishes. This ridiculous conversation has given her a fully realized migraine and the noise in the house is getting louder which is only making it worse. 

“What’s the last thing that you remember then?”

“Barradas II,” Kathryn offers eventually. “I was on Barradas II. We were negotiating an end to the civil war.”

The Admiral stares at her pointedly, and so she continues. 

“The negotiations were going well and then they fell apart. There was a bombing. Several bombings. Starfleet evacuated us.”

“How did they evacuate you,” her future self prods. 

“Shuttle. There was too much debris in the air for transporters.” Suddenly, Kathryn is gasping for breath. It’s like her lungs won’t take in enough air and her chest feels like every single one of her ribs is broken. The pain is so sharp that it’s almost visible, like she can see it clawing into her. 

“What’s happening to me,” she manages to gasp, as she doubles over, gripping her sides. The noise is louder now and she can tell that it is people. They are shouting something. It seems familiar but she can’t quite make it out. 

“What happened at the shuttle, Kathryn?” The Admiral taps the end of her cigar, seemingly unaware of, or at least completely unfazed by, her younger self’s pain. 

“A man,” she whispers. It’s all she can manage right now. She can’t seem to draw in a deep breath. “He had something in his hands.” 

“What was it?”

_A bomb_. There had been a bomb. Suddenly, it all comes flooding back to her. The flight through the air as pieces of bone and pavement embed themselves in her chest and face and legs, returning to consciousness and being in such agony, being on the shuttle. In a flash, her leg is on fire and she collapses to the floor. She looks down and now her leg does look awful. It is shredded to pieces, little strips of skin hanging off, muscle and nerve endings and bone exposed to the air. It’s agony and she can’t help but scream. Her scream is short lived as she is suddenly coughing up blood. The blood is a bright, oxygenated red and she is certain that her injuries are dire. It’s then that she realizes. She’s not dead. She’s merely dying. 

The noise has become loud enough to make out words. 

“20 milligrams of neurazine!”

“No effect. We’re losing her!”

“Admiral! Stay with us, Admiral!” 

“Cortical stimulator!”

Kathryn shakes her head, trying to understand, trying to block out the noise that isn’t making sense. She realizes that the Admiral is sitting beside her now. She is drawing pictures in the blood on the floor.

“You’re dead, Kathryn,” the Admiral begins. “Or at least, close enough. You should accept it. You and Chakotay had a good run. You saved his life. You got to be happy. Now it’s over.”

That sentence sobers Kathryn like a slap in the face. She snaps her head up and stares into the eyes of her future self. 

“No.” 

“What do you mean, no?” The Admiral brings her hand up to Kathryn’s face and starts drawing the outline of Chakotay’s tattoo above her eyebrow in her blood. “This is how it has to be, Kathryn. A life for a life. It’s only fair.” Kathryn jerks her face away, the sudden effort causing her to cough again, sending sharp pain through her torso and causing her to fall to her side. She catches herself with her hands and pushes herself back upright. 

“I said no,” she manages to gasp out. “I don’t believe that.” She sucks in her breath like she’s underwater and breathing through a straw. “It’s not over. I can hear them, whoever they are. They are trying to save me.” She isn’t sure what makes her do it, but she forces herself to stand back up, balancing on her one good leg, trying to ignore how much of her blood has started to pool on the carpet. “And it isn’t fair. I’m not taking two months of happiness and considering them all I get for everything that happened. I made countless sacrifices. I loved him for almost 7 years. I watched us hurt each other over and over again because we couldn’t talk about what was going on between us. I sent him into danger - chose the crew and Starfleet over him - time and time again and I’m supposed to be satisfied with two months of loving him? I’m supposed to just shuffle off quietly because ‘the universe needs its due’? Go to hell.” 

The Admiral stands up to face her. “Then fight, Kathryn. If you want to be with him, you have to fight.”

The voices are so loud now that they are all Kathryn can hear. They are so loud, they hurt her ears. 

“Try another pulse. 30 millijoules this time.”

“No effect.”

“40 millijoules.”

“Nothing.”

Kathryn presses her hands to her ears, trying to get away from the sound. The Admiral places her hands over Kathryn’s, drawing them back down from her head. 

“Do you want to live,” the Admiral yells over the din of the voices. Kathryn can only nod. “Then focus on the noise!”

She closes her eyes and lets the noise and her pain become the only sensations in the universe.  


“Again.”

“Doctor?”

“I said again! 40 millijoules!”

“40 millijoules. I have activity in the cortex!”

Kathryn feels the Admiral’s hands drop away from her arms and suddenly realizes that she is lying down again. She opens her eyes and is greeted by bright lights. The lights make her head hurt and she groans. 

“She’s coming around doctor.” 

She tries to open her eyes again, peering through them half-shut, and tries to ask them where she is, but no words form. Instead, there is a sudden, sharp pain in her head and she cries out in agony. A console somewhere starts beeping loudly. 

“She has a cerebral hemorrhage. She’s bleeding into her brain.” 

“We have to prep her for surgery.”

“No. We’ll put her in stasis and install a shunt to keep the pressure down.”

“Doctor?”

“The procedure is risky enough! I’ve never done it before. I’m waiting for Beverly.”

A hypospray is pressed into her neck, and the world goes dark again.   


When Kathryn wakes up the next time, it’s much less bright. She opens her eyes and finds herself looking at the ceiling of a sick bay. Somehow all sick bay ceilings look the same. She groans and realizes that someone has come to stand beside her. 

“You’re awake. Well, that is an excellent sign.” A tall redhead in a gray and blue science uniform is waving a tricorder over her. Kathryn recognizes Beverly Crusher immediately. 

“Beverly,” she chokes out. Kathryn swallows hard. She realizes that she is very thirsty. “Where am I,” she manages. 

“The _Enterprise_ ,” Dr. Crusher returns. Before she can say another word, something catches the corner of Kathryn’s eye. 

“Kathryn?” She turns slightly to see a very sleepy Chakotay looking up at her through bleary eyes. His head and arms are resting on her biobed and the rest of him is in a chair. 

“Chakotay,” she breaths. Marshaling herself into mock seriousness, she glares at him. “If you crashed us in another one of my shuttles, I’m taking away your pilot’s license.”

Suddenly he is out of the chair and his arms are under her back, pulling her up into a sitting position and holding her against his chest. He’s stroking her hair and crying and kissing her face so gently and it’s so impossibly overwhelming that she’s crying too. She isn’t sure how long they stay like that, with his arms surrounding her completely, making her safe, but she is acutely aware when it is over. Dr. Crusher had made herself scarce when Chakotay woke up but returns after a while. 

“Admiral, Captain, I need to do some more scans.”

Kathryn feels Chakotay slide his hands away from her hair and gently lay her back down. 

“Admiral, can you tell me what happened,” Dr. Crusher asks as she runs a diagnostic on her tricorder. “You said something about a shuttle crash.”

“Just a joke, Doctor. I remember there was a bomb,” she says quietly. “And please call me Kathryn.” 

“Good,” the doctor says. “I’ll have you tell me the whole story in a little while so that I can runs some tests on your memory enneagrams. For now, Kathryn, I want you to go back to sleep and rest some more. It was touch and go for quite awhile but these scans look very good. I think you’ll make a full recovery.”

“How long,” Kathryn asks. 

“Five days,” she replies. “You were dead when you arrived but the doctor on the _Oklahoma_ got you revived and stabilized 30 minutes after the shuttle made it to them. Then you started bleeding into your brain. He made the decision to install a shunt and put you in stasis until they met up with us. He had never done the procedure that was required and was afraid that he would do more harm than good. Instead, he assisted me 24 hours later. His actions saved your life.” 

They all lapsed into contemplative silence, each thinking about what could have happened if the doctor had chosen differently and decided to operate by himself. 

“Does she have to stay here to rest,” Chakotay asks, breaking the silence. 

Beverly took another look at her tricorder readings. “Everything here looks good, so I suppose not. I’ll release you to quarters, Kathryn, but you are to go straight there and then go right to sleep. Doctor’s orders.” The grimace must have given her away, because Beverly shifts her focus to Chakotay. “You are to go with her and make sure that she sleeps.” 

“Yes, doctor,” he answers solemnly.

“I’ll order you a site to site,” she continues. “I don’t want the Admiral walking that far yet.” 

He helps Kathryn sit back up and then lifts her off the biobed and cradles her to his chest. 

“I’m perfectly capable of standing,” she whispers in his ear.

“How would you know,” he whispers back. “You’ve been in a medically induced coma for five days.” She can’t help but admit that he may have a point. She feels the familiar hum of the transporter and then finds herself in a set of guest quarters. “To bed with you, Kathryn,” he whispers into her hair, carrying her across the living room and into the bedroom. 

“I’m really not tired, Chakotay,” she protests. 

“Doctor’s orders, Kathryn. Besides, I can think of little better than to hold you for a few hours. Especially after the last few days.”

She looks up at him and sees the unspeakable agony that he has gone through etched on his face and almost bursts into tears. Instead, she slides her hand along his cheek, sighing as she feels him press his face into her palm, and then draws it across to settle under his ear. She pulls him down to her for a kiss. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I almost broke my promise.” 

“I don’t want to think about that.”

“Okay. Come hold me then.” They crawl into the bed together and she tucks herself up into his side, her head resting on his chest. He wraps his arms around her and she feels him place another kiss in her hair.

“Sleep, Kathryn. You’re home now.”

She lays in his arms, relishing in the feel of his warmth and inhaling his scent. She can’t help but remember what the Admiral had said in her - fever dream? hallucination? - whatever it had been. She vows then to fight every single moment of her life for this - for these feelings of safe and home - for Chakotay. Her mind made up and her priorities defined, she surrenders to sleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for hanging in with me guys! I think this may only have one more chapter, but we'll see.


	10. Truces

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: mentions of terrorism, specifically bombings, both suicide and non.

Chakotay feels himself materialize on the transporter pad of the _Enterprise_. He has a small bag slung over his shoulder and greets the transporter technician with a nod. He has been onboard for 10 days and Kathryn had regained consciousness 4 days ago. Dr. Crusher had told them yesterday that she felt comfortable releasing Kathryn from her care, so long as she reported to Medical for a few weeks to ensure that she was really going to be fine. Chakotay had beamed down to Earth this morning to grab some fresh clothes for both of them and to try and clean up the apartment a little. He had left in a hurry and so it was disaster area. As he walks back to their guest quarters he can’t help but reflect on the last week and half. 

  
When he had transported to the _Enterprise_ , he had looked across the pad and seen that Admiral Patterson had been brought up in the same beam. He had started to take a step toward him when a voice brought him to a halt.

“Admiral, Captain, welcome to the _Enterprise_. If you’ll follow me, I’ll take you up to the bridge to meet with the captain.” Chakotay had watched Will Riker’s smile falter as he took in Chakotay’s bleeding hand and general demeanor. “Or perhaps we should stop in sick bay first. That hand looks like it’s broken.”

“It’s fine, Commander,” Chakotay had barked. “Lead the way.” As they walked out of the transporter room and into the hall, he had felt the familiar hum of the impulse engines engaging as the ship swung out to break orbit. Before they had even made it to the bridge, the warp engines kicked on and Chakotay knew that they were headed for Kathryn. He had felt something inside him begin to unknot. Just knowing that they were underway made him feel more in control of the situation. 

As they stepped into the turbolift, he had felt both Riker and Patterson glancing at him furtively, both seemingly trying to figure out his state of mind. He had chosen to ignore them and stared straight ahead instead. 

The turbolift doors had opened onto the bridge and Chakotay had seen from the viewscreen that they had indeed gone to warp. The sight of the stars flying past had been achingly familiar and only served to remind him that the person he had spent the most time with while watching sights like these wasn’t here. In fact, she was likely dying someplace else. He had tried to push the thought out of his mind as he heard Riker introducing him to someone. 

“Captain Jean Luc Picard, meet Captain Chakotay.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Captain,” Picard had said, extending his hand. “I admire the work that you and Admiral Janeway did in getting your people home. I only wish that we were meeting under different circumstances. Let me show you and the Admiral to my ready room. You have the bridge, Number One.”

They had crossed the bridge to enter Picard’s ready room and Chakotay had thought how strange it was to have it on the opposite side from the one on _Voyager_. He had been surprised to find that it was smaller than Kathryn’s as well. 

“Please sit,” Picard had instructed, but Chakotay had remained standing, wandering over to the window instead. He had watched the reflection in the window as Picard and Patterson exchanged a look and had realized that he was making everyone onboard nervous. A part of him had been a little gratified to know that even though they had reinstated his commission and promoted him, that Starfleet still understood that the Maquis raider inside wasn’t quite tame. 

“Here is what we know,” Picard had begun. “Intelligence reports from the planet state that this was a massive and coordinated attack. Bombs were detonated in every major city on the continent in places both strategic and benign. It is believed that several non-traditional targets were selected with the express purpose of showing people that nowhere was safe. We have reason to believe that our people on the ground were also specifically chosen targets and not simply caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Lieutenant Commander Lane says that the explosion that the Admiral was caught in was due to a single bomb detonated by a suicide bomber.”

“Do we have confirmation about the rest of the negotiation team,” Patterson had asked.

“Lane confirms that Ciroc, Ashmore, and two other members of his security team died immediately after the detonation of the device,” Picard answered. “The bomber was behind them, and Lane and Admiral Janeway were leading the pack on the run to the shuttle. The two of them were furthest from the blast and thus made it to the shuttle and off the surface. What I don’t understand is how we could have not had intelligence about this. Someone spent weeks planetside, laying the groundwork for these negotiations and no one heard a single rumor about an attack of this scale?” Chakotay had felt the laugh explode out of him before he could stop it. It had been harsh and biting sounding. 

“Something amusing, Captain,” he had heard Patterson ask icily. 

“I just think it’s funny that the captain thinks Starfleet was unaware of this threat when they sent the team down to start the negotiations.”

“I don’t like what you are suggesting, Captain,” Patterson had snapped back. Chakotay had whirled around from the window and crossed to the Admiral in three swift strides. 

“I really don’t care a single iota what you like, Admiral.” His voice had been dangerously calm. “You knew that there was a good chance that you were sending them into a battlefield and, not only did you send them anyway, you sent them with no advance warning. Starfleet Command as good as murdered those four men and, if Kathryn dies, you’ll have murdered her, as well.”

“You’re out of line, Captain,” Patterson had shouted. 

“Gentlemen -“ Picard had started, but Chakotay cut him off. 

“If it isn’t true, then deny it, Admiral. Deny that you sent your favorite student - your best friend’s daughter - and several other people into a terrorist scenario without giving them all the facts.” Patterson had stared at him in silence. 

“Gentlemen,” Picard had restarted, “as there is little more that can be done at this moment, I suggest that you allow my staff to show you to your quarters. We are set to rendezvous with the _Oklahoma_ in 25 hours and 7 minutes, but we are hoping to shave some time off of that en route. I’ll notify you when we are close.” 

“I have some calls to make,” the Admiral had said and then turned on his heel and disappeared onto the bridge. 

“Sorry about that,” Chakotay had apologized, as the doors closed. “I’m usually better at controlling myself around the admiralty.” He had swept his hand across his face and suddenly realized that he was exhausted. 

“No need to apologize,” Picard had answered. “If what you are suggesting is true, and all the evidence seems to suggest that it is, then they should be ashamed of themselves. Unfortunately, it isn’t the first time and it won’t be the last.” 

Chakotay had whirled around to look at him, shocked to hear such a prominent member of Starfleet say anything negative about the organization. Picard seemed to understand and continued. 

“The war with the Dominion has changed Starfleet. Although, honestly, I think the conflict with the Cardassians is what really started to tip the balance. We were already engaged in a cold war with the Romulans when the Cardassians raised their ugly heads and it’s been 50 years of non-stop espionage and outright war ever since. I think we’ve forgotten what we are supposed to be doing out here.” 

“That’s why I decided to join the Maquis in the first place,” Chakotay had admitted. 

“I know. I’ve read your file.” A brief silence had fallen as both men were lost in their own thoughts, each quietly mourning the organization that they had once loved and reflecting on the cost of what it had become. “You should stop by sickbay and see Dr. Crusher before you go to your quarters,” Picard had said, breaking the silence. “She has received detailed information from the doctor on board the _Oklahoma_ about the Admiral’s condition and I’m sure she will be happy to update you.”

“Thank you. I will definitely do that.” Chakotay had reached across the desk and shaken the other captain’s hand. “You know, you are nothing like what I expected.”

“I’ll take that as compliment.” With a slight nod, Chakotay had exited the ready room and started towards sick bay. 

An hour later, Chakotay had finally reported to his guest quarters. He had hoped that a conversation with Dr. Crusher would make him feel better, but if anything, he felt worse. She had been candid with him about Kathryn’s situation. Dr. Fitzherbert had stated that Kathryn had been dead when she arrived on the _Oklahoma_ , although they had managed to revive her. Unfortunately, she had then immediately begun to bleed into her brain from her internal carotid artery. Uncomfortable with trying to repair the damage himself, and knowing that the _Enterprise_ was already on its way, he had elected to install a shunt and place Kathryn in stasis. He would assist Dr. Crusher in the procedure when the ships met the next day. Dr. Crusher had only given Chakotay 50-50 odds that she would even survive. He had spent the rest of the day in a vision quest, hoping that his spirit guide would provide him with the clarity and the peace that he needed. 

The next five days had been agony. Seeing Kathryn when they first brought her aboard had almost ended him. She had been a mess. Cuts and bruises covered every inch of her and one of her legs looked like it had been through a meat grinder. Her hair was stiff with dried blood and he noticed that one of her ear lobes had bled significantly where an earring had been torn from its hole. On the first day, Dr. Crusher had told him that she would start working on Kathryn’s other injuries in a few days. Trying to heal everything at once would put too much stress on her body, and the last thing that Kathryn’s brain needed was stress. He had slept little and eaten less. He left sick bay only when Dr. Crusher threatened to sedate him and have him bodily removed, and even that was just to shower and change clothes. He slept where he had always slept when Kathryn was in sick bay - in a chair next to her. The day she woke up was the happiest day of his life. 

He opens the door to their guest quarters and finds Kathryn cleaning. She’s still in her pajamas and he can’t stop himself from admiring her from the doorway. Her regular sessions with Dr. Crusher have healed most of her superficial wounds, although even the dermal regenerator couldn’t completely put her leg back together without some minor scaring. He can see several narrow pink lines peeking out from under her shorts and winding down her right thigh. She looks up at him from where she is recycling their replicated clothes from their stay on board and smiles her brightest smile. 

“Here comes all of my favorite things,” she singsongs unmusically. “Did you bring it?” She grabs the bag from him and starts pawing through it like a kid on Christmas morning and Chakotay can’t help but smile back at her. She summarily drops the bag as she finds what she is looking for. “There you are,” she exclaims, bringing the small bag of coffee to her nose and inhaling deeply. “God, I have missed you.” 

“Hello to you too,” he laughs, placing a kiss in her hair. She looks up at him in a daze, like she has forgotten that he was there. “I see where I rank in this relationship. Somewhere far behind freshly ground coffee.”

“That’s not fair,” she throws over her shoulder as she strolls to the coffee maker that she had replicated that morning. “I’ve been with you for 4 days. I haven’t had good coffee in more than 2 weeks. Also, I said favorite things - that included you.” 

“Even still, I’m going to remind you that the Federation does not yet recognize plant-mammal unions as marriages, so you’ll have to find some mammal to be your beard for a while.” 

The look she throws back over her shoulder could strip paint off walls. He picks up the bag from the floor and takes it into the bedroom while she finishes loading the coffee into the machine. He pulls his finds out of the bag and lays them out on the bed for her look at. He had grabbed several different top, pant, and shoe selections for her to choose from while he had been at the apartment. He had also cleaned up the worst of the mess from the half finished surprise project. He silently asks the spirits again to ensure that she liked what he had planned. He turns as he hears her enter and sees that she is carrying a cup of coffee for him, as well.

“Here,” she says, as she hands the cup to him, “Not that you deserve it after the mean things that you said about it.”

“I apologize from the bottom of my heart,” he returns with a twinkle in his eye. “Now look and see what I have brought from the upscale boutique, _Chez Maquis_. A wide selection of clothing that I hope will be to madam’s liking.” She rolls her eyes at him and then quickly picks the outfit that he had thought she would - the lightweight blue V-neck sweater with the snowflake print from his mom and black leggings with her tan leather flats. He nurses his coffee as he watches her change and he realizes that something about her is off. 

“What’s wrong,” he asks quietly, taking another sip of his coffee. 

“It’s nothing,” Kathryn answers. She has moved into the bathroom and is using the mirror to pull her shoulder length hair into a ponytail. 

“Then tell me.” 

He watches her make eye contact with him in the mirror. 

“Ted Patterson paid me a visit this morning,” she begins. The Admiral had been to see her exactly one other time since she had regained consciousness. He had listened in on her memories of the bombing while Dr. Crusher had run the test on her memory enneagrams - awkwardly patting her hand when it was over and telling her that he was glad that she was okay - but had given the two of them wide berth otherwise. Chakotay had actually thought that he had returned to the surface days ago.

“He seemed to be under the impression that someone had told me that Starfleet had intelligence before they sent us to Barradas II that suggested that there would be a major bombing and that negotiations were doomed to fail.” She raises an eyebrow at his reflection.

“Interesting. Did he say where he thought those rumors had initiated?” He swirls the remaining coffee in the bottom of his mug, refusing to break eye contact with her to finish it.

“He didn’t mention it.” She allows the silence to stretch between them, but he knows her games and refuses to take the bait. “He said he wanted to set the record straight,” she finally finishes. 

“Ah,” he murmurs noncommittally. He tosses the last of the coffee down his throat as she comes back into the bedroom and sits beside him on the bed. “And what was the ‘straight’ story?”

She is suddenly very fascinated with her fingernails. “He said that Starfleet had only received some non-credible intel stating that there might me ‘some unrest’ on the planet when we arrived.” Chakotay watches her pick at one of her cuticles. “He said that they had no idea that one of the rebel factions was being supplied by the Romulans. He promised me that they never would have sent a team down if they had thought we would be in any real danger.” He reaches down and stills her hand before she can make herself bleed. 

“Sounds like they had some bad intel,” he says quietly. “What did you say?”

“I thanked him for the explanation. I’m sure that you can imagine his shock when I told him that I had heard no such rumor. But, I told him that I was comforted to know that the Admiralty, including my father’s oldest friend, hadn’t knowingly sent several of us to our deaths in a fight they knew we were going to lose.” She looks up at him and he can see the anger and the hurt of the revelation in her eyes. He pulls her to his chest and kisses her gently and when she opens her eyes again, only sadness remains. “Why didn’t you tell me what you suspected?”

“I wasn’t sure,” he answered simply. “I thought maybe it was just my old Maquis instincts, seeing threats that weren’t there, but then even Captain Picard thought it was unusual that the Starfleet contacts had heard nothing about an attack that large and so I confronted Patterson. He didn’t confirm it, but he didn’t deny it either. I didn’t say anything to you because you were still recovering, and because I wanted to see what he would do with damage control.”

“It seems that everything that you thought is true.” She is silent for a moment, staring into the corner of the room and lost in her own mind. “You know, I really didn’t think that Starfleet was so far gone. I knew the war was hard. I knew that as bad as everything was that we faced out in the delta quadrant, that it can’t even begin to compare to having to wage a war on Earth again. But I didn’t think that it had gotten this bad. Ciroc, Ashmore, Philbrook, Tarec, countless others, didn’t have to die down there. We could have pulled back. We could have changed tactics. We had other options. They chose the path that offered the fastest results and people died because of it.” She’s up and pacing across the room now, unable to sit still while she’s so angry at the situation that they find themselves in. Chakotay knows the pacing calms her. He has seen her do it countless times. It’s as though her mind moves faster and thinks better when her feet are moving, and the faster and the better she thinks, the more quickly a solution will present itself. 

“Kathryn,” he says after her tenth circuit of the room. She ignores him and continues her pacing, so he stands and puts himself in her way on her next pass. “Kathryn,” he repeats quietly, lightly grasping her shoulders. She stops this time and looks up at him. “You aren’t going to solve this one. There isn’t a solution that you can find. At least, not before you wear a hole straight through the bulkhead.” 

“Chakotay, you don’t know -” she starts to argue, but he cuts her off.

“Starfleet is broken, Kathryn. We know that now. We know that it’s not just Nechayev and her followers. We know that even the affable Ted Patterson is not above sending people to their deaths for even a small chance at gaining a stronghold near Romulan space. Now we just have to decide what we do with that information.” 

She watches him silently for a moment and then nods her head. “I’m just so tired of feeling powerless,” she says quietly. 

“When has Kathryn Janeway ever been powerless,” he asks seriously. 

“Plenty of times. On Cardassia Prime. When my father died. When my only choice was stranding us all in the delta quadrant or letting the Ocampa die. In the void. During our debriefings.” She trails off, lost in her memories. 

“Being powerless is different than any of those situations. You survived Cardassia Prime. You mourned your father and used his death to push you into command. You did the right thing by a group of people you only barely knew. The same goes for the void and countless others times out there. And you defended each and every member of your crew like your life depended in it. That isn’t powerlessness. That’s tenacity. That’s the Kathryn Janeway that I fell in love with.” 

“You’re going to give me a complex,” she jokes, but there is love in her eyes and he sees the darkness that was threatening to engulf her retreating. “What do you think we should do?”

“Honestly? I don’t know. But right now, I want to go home.”

“Yes,” she answers. “I’ve been dreaming about sleeping in our bed for days. Were our beds on _Voyager_ this uncomfortable?”

“Either they weren’t or we were so exhausted we didn’t notice.” 

“Why do I get the feeling it was the latter,” she laughs. 

An hour later, they transport down to San Fransisco. Against his better judgment, he lets her convince him to walk the long way back to the apartment instead of take a cab. As they stroll along the beach, he watches her breathing in the fresh ocean air, relishes the feel of her hand laced with his, and thanks the spirits for the thousandth time for bringing her back to him. She starts to flag about halfway home and by the time they make it to their building, Chakotay can tell that she is exhausted. He lets them in the front door of their building and then reaches down and picks her up. 

“What do you think you’re doing,” she squirms, trying to free herself from his grip. He pulls her tighter to his chest, one arm against her shoulders and the other under her knees. 

“Carrying you up our stairs so that you don’t fall over on the way to our door, Admiral,” he jokes. 

“I would have made it up the stairs just fine, Captain,” she returns sulkily, emphasizing his rank. 

“You were literally dead nine days ago, Kathryn. Humor me.” As he carries her up the stairs, he hears her mumble something about showing him what dead looks like and he smiles. 

He takes her across the threshold into their apartment and the sudden symbolism of the action hits him like a wall. 

“Welcome home, love of my life.” She turns her face up to look at him and he bends his neck to kiss her. She threads her hands through his hair and the kiss that started out tender quickly becomes more passionate until he finally breaks them apart. 

“Kathryn,” he pants, resting his forehead against hers, “you know what Dr. Crusher said about these kinds of activities.”

“I heard that as more of a suggestion than an actual order,” she says with a wicked grin. 

“You are a devil woman,” he returns. 

“Devil woman? I was the love of your life two minutes ago!” She’s still smiling a Cheshire cat smile and he can feel a grin on his own face that rivals it. He plants her on a stool at the kitchen island and gets them each a glass of water. 

“So I didn’t get to finish my surprise for you,” he starts as she drains her glass in a single breath. 

“I totally forgot about the surprise! Can I guess now?” She’s practically bouncing up and down. 

“Go for it,” he replies, sipping his water more slowly. 

“It’s a lamp,” she states authoritatively. “Three weeks ago, I complained that we didn’t have enough light in the bedroom for me to read reports in bed. You, being so thoughtful, will have remembered this throwaway comment and thus, you are making a lamp.” She finishes with a small bow and a slight wave of her right hand, as though she is taking applause from an imaginary audience. 

“Well, that is impressive,” he says, picking up their glasses and filling them with water again. “The deductive reasoning. The concise summary of how the idea came about. All very, very impressive.” 

“Thank you,” she returns, taking the water from him and sipping this glass more reasonably. “It’s all right there for anyone to see if you just pay close enough attention -“

“I mean, it’s wrong,” he interrupts. 

“It’s what?”

“It’s wrong. I’m not building a lamp.”

“You are so building a lamp.”

“Nope.”

“Lying is not an attractive trait in boyfriends, you know,” she says, arching an eyebrow at him. “And don’t be a bad sport. Just because I figured it out doesn’t mean you have to get all upset about it.”

“I’m not upset and I’m not lying,” he says with a grin. “You’re just wrong. Come in the bedroom and see.” 

She narrows her eyes at him and then stands up and starts to stalk towards the bedroom. She whips back to face him in the doorway, placing a finger on his chest. “When it turns out that there is a half-finished lamp or several half-finished lamps or some other lighting system in this bedroom, I will expect an apology. And sex.” 

He laughs and follows her into the bedroom. She’s staring at their bed and closet. 

“There’s no surprise in here,” she says. “Everything looks exactly like when I left.”

He grabs her gently by the shoulders and turns her to face the opposite wall. Next to the window seat is the beginning of a set of shelves. Two shelves have already been anchored into the brick wall and have a selection of her books and other mementos on them. Three more are propped against the wall, just waiting for installation. 

“You said that Jane Eyre reads in her window seat. You do too. I thought that it would be nice for you if your books could be close to your favorite spot.” She walks closer to the wall and runs her hands along the smooth surface of the wood, letting her fingers travel over the books and the frames of photos of her family, her crew, a photo of the two of them taken at one of the welcome home balls that had been held for Voyager after the debriefings were over. Her hand comes to rest on the top of her copy of _The Divine Comedy_ and she turns to look at him. “Do you like it,” he asks, uncertainly. “I mean, I can make you a lamp, too.” 

“It’s perfect, Chakotay,” she says. “It’s so much better than a lamp.” He feels his face light up in a smile and she is walking back toward him. “You’re wrong though.”

“Wrong about what,” he asks. 

She wraps her arms around him, squeezing him tightly against her. “The window seat isn’t my favorite spot. This is. Being in your arms is my favorite spot.” He bends down to kiss her again and suddenly neither of them seem to think that Dr. Crusher’s orders were anything more than suggestions. 

Kathryn falls asleep after, but Chakotay stays awake, holding her and stroking her perfect skin. He traces her scars, old and new, from wounds too deep or too significant or left too long untreated. He knows the stories behind most of them, but some are still a mystery. He runs his fingers gently across her cheekbone and pushes a lock of hair out of her face. She nuzzles herself closer to him in her sleep and he places a gentle kiss on her temple. 

“You are enough for me, Kathryn,” he whispers to her. “No matter what happens, no matter what we decide to do about life or about Starfleet, none of it matters as long as I get to keep you. You are enough.” He kisses her hair and falls into blissful sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently, I have a very deep-seated resentment towards Starfleet Command and the way they handle things, that I am only just discovering. Who knew? The next chapter should wrap this thing up, but I've made such promises before, so, take that with a grain of salt, I guess? Thanks again for reading!


	11. Resolutions

_Four Months Later_

Kathryn opens her eyes as she hears the door to the apartment open. She’s been soaking in the tub for almost 20 minutes and had been nearly asleep. _I’m going to be all pruney,_ she thinks, lifting one leg out of the water to survey her toes. 

“Chakotay,” she calls. “Is that you?”

“Kathryn,” she hears him call uncertainly. 

“In the tub,” she answers. He walks into the bathroom, gray uniform jacket slung over his shoulder and his red turtleneck already untucked. 

“Hi,” she says, smiling up at him. “Long day?” 

“Extremely,” he answers. “Grading final papers paired with end of term shenanigans. You know how the cadets get this time of year.” She nods and grins as she remembers several shenanigans that she had been part of while at the Academy. “You’re home early,” he continues. “I wasn’t expecting you until dinner.”

“Did I ruin your plans to meet up with your mistress,” she jokes. 

“Oh, no. She’s still coming over, so you better make some room in that tub.” She laughs as he sits down on the floor beside her and kisses her. “So, why are you home early? Are you feeling okay?”

Kathryn feels her smile fade as she tries to figure out how to say what needs to be said. “I got some news today,” she starts slowly. “It needed contemplation.”

“Hence the bath.”

“Hence the bath,” she agrees. They sit silently for a few seconds. She knows that he’s giving her the space to tell him her news. It’s one of the things that she has always appreciated about him. “Medical has officially cleared me for full active duty.”

“Ah,” he answers. 

“They must have told Command before they told me, because the second I ended the call with them, Nechayev was in my office.”

“Fantastic,” she hears him mutter under his breath. “What did Admiral Sourpuss want,” he says louder. 

“She offered me an assignment off-world.”

“A fleet? Or a ship?”

“A diplomatic mission.” She pauses and then decides it’s best to just get it over with quickly, like resetting a joint. “They want me back on Barradas II.” His face freezes and then he starts laughing and she realizes that he thinks she’s joking. 

“That’s hilarious, Kathryn,” he says. Dangling his hand in the water, he flicks some at her. “What’s the real assignment?”

“I’m not joking, Chakotay. They want me back there in 4 weeks.” He stares at her blankly for several seconds and then suddenly he’s moving. He stands up so quickly that the transition from sitting to standing is almost imperceptible. He opens his mouth like he’s going to speak and then slams it shut so hard that she hears his teeth knock together. He turns on his heel and stalks out of the bathroom. Seconds later, she hears the door to the apartment slam behind him. She drops her head back onto the rim of the tub and sighs. 

“Well, that went well,” she says into the empty apartment. 

An hour later, he returns. She’s wrapped in a blanket on the sofa, staring at the rain through the window. She had forgotten how dreary San Francisco gets in December. She hears the door open and turns to face him. He’s soaking wet but she can tell from his face that he’s calmer now.

“Hey,” she offers. 

“Hey,” he returns quietly. She stands up from the sofa and walks into the bedroom, returning with a towel. 

“You’re dripping all over the floor.”

“It’s raining,” he answers simply, taking the towel and running it over his face and then through his hair.

“You don’t say,” she says dryly.

“Kathryn -” he starts, but she places her hand on his lips. 

“You need to change. Go take a hot shower and then put on something dry. I’ll order delivery for dinner and then we’ll talk. I promise.” The frantic look in his eyes fades a little and he covers her hand with his, anchoring it to his lips as he kisses her fingers. 

“Okay,” he answers. She comes up onto her tiptoes and kisses his cheek before pulling her hand away. 

“Okay. Now go get out of those clothes before I have to kill you for ruining this floor.” 

“Yes, ma’am,” he says with a grin and she manages to smack him as he walks away into the bedroom. 

He emerges from the bedroom in a loose pair of pants and a long sleeved shirt just as she finishes ordering their dinner. 

“I ordered our usual from Zathura,” she says as she settles next to him on the sofa. “They said 20 minutes.” 

“Sounds good.” He wraps an arm around her shoulders and hugs her closer to him so that her head is resting against his chest. She can hear his heartbeat if she listens hard enough. 

“Kathryn, we have to talk about this,” she hears him say above her head. She angles her neck so that she can look up at him.

“I know.” 

“I don’t want you to go back there.” 

“I know that, too.” 

“Kathryn, please, please tell me that you’re not considering this. You can’t honestly expect me to just sit here and let you go back to that place? You _died_ down there! It’s sheer luck, or providence, or divine intervention, that you are here and alive at all! They blew you up to avoid peace, Kathryn! They did it once and they’ll do it again. Starfleet can’t honestly believe that the Romulans won’t get involved again, right? I mean, no one is that stupid.” He stares down at her intensely, the rest of his diatribe having been delivered into the living room above her. “Please, don’t do this, Kathryn. I don’t think I’ll survive. _We_ certainly won’t.” 

She stares into his eyes, watching the pain of almost losing her and the fear of her answer flit through them, jockeying for seniority. She sees how much he loves her there, how desperately afraid he is that she will choose duty over him again and it breaks her heart. She knows that everything about their track record suggests to him that it is a very real possibility. She’s chosen Starfleet over him so many times that she has no idea why he even loves her. She places her hand on his face, drawing her thumb across his cheekbone and pulls him down to kiss her. It starts off tentative, but quickly becomes possessive, like he’s trying to convince her to choose him this time, to admit to the universe that she belongs more to him that to Starfleet or the Federation. When they finally break apart, she lays her head back on his chest. 

“Technically, I died in the shuttle,” she starts, “not on the planet.”

“Kathryn, I’m serious. I don’t - I’m not,” he starts and stops again, unable to find the words to fully articulate his feelings. “I can’t lose you like that again,” he states finally. “If you decide to do this, I can’t support it. I’m not strong enough to watch you decide to die for Starfleet for no reason. If you leave, you’ll be leaving me too. And I’m not trying to pressure you, or give you an ultimatum. I just need you to know that if you go, I’ll need to have this be over between us, for the sake of my soul.” 

“I know,” she hears herself whisper. She clears her throat. “Do you remember what I told you I saw while I was unconscious on the _Oklahoma_?”

“You were dead, not unconscious, Kathryn.”

“Do you remember?” She looks back up at him, prodding him with her eyes. 

“You said you talked to your future self.”

“Yes.”

“You said you fought.”

“Yes. She told me that my death was inevitable. That I saved you from dying in her timeline and so the universe was owed a soul. She told me that we had all the happiness that we could have expected and that I should just consider myself lucky and die.” 

He’s looking at her with a surprised look on his face. She had never told him in detail what had happened. 

“In hindsight, she was clearly trying to get me riled up, trying to convince me to fight back to life, but at the time, I just thought that she believed what she was saying. I’ve never been so mad in my life, Chakotay. I told her that I wouldn’t take it. That I wouldn’t accept that all we got was that, that we deserved more. And that’s when she said it.”

“Said what?”

“She told me I had to fight for you. That I had to fight and that I couldn’t stop. When I woke up and saw you there, sleeping on a chair next to me just like always, I knew she was right. I resolved then, that day, that I would never ever stop fighting for you. You are what I want. You are who I choose. What we have between us is too precious to let anything disturb it. I didn’t know that before Barradas II, but I do now. I made my decision before I even left the office today. I’m not going back, Chakotay. Nechayev and Starfleet and the whole Federation be damned.” 

“But you said you needed to think,” he says, sounding slightly dazed by her revelation. 

“I did. I have to decide what I’m going to do next. Starfleet is probably going to throw me out on my ear when I refuse a direct order. It’s only an offer right now, but Nechayev made it clear that they would make it an order if they had to. They probably figure that this will ensure that they are able to be rid of me, one way or the other. So, I need to figure out what I should do with my life instead.” 

“Why didn’t you start with this when you told me this afternoon?” 

“You didn’t give me a chance!”

“Right,” he admits quietly. He silent for a few seconds. “You’re sure, Kathryn,” he questions. “You’re sure about leaving Starfleet? It’s been your whole life.”

“Yes, I’m sure.” 

“I just - ” he pauses, uncertain how to continue. “I don’t want you to resent me later.”

“Resent you,” she asks, as she pushes herself up off his chest so she can face him, now very confused about the turn that this conversation has taken. 

“I don’t want you to leave Starfleet for me,” he finally forces out. “I don’t want you to wake up one morning and look across at me and see only regrets because you chose me instead of them. I didn’t think - didn’t realize - that you really thought that they would boot you out for refusing this.” 

“Chakotay,” she breaths. “If they kick me out for this, then they will be the reason that I’m no longer in Starfleet, not you. And I will never ever regret anything between us. Besides, they’ve changed. You said so yourself months ago. It’s not the same organization my father loved; it’s not even the same one that I did.”

“Starfleet is your life, Kathryn.”

“No, it isn’t,” she says, shaking her head. “It was once. Before the delta quadrant, before _Voyager_ , yes, Starfleet was my life. Nothing else mattered as much to me. But that changed out there. You know that I was close with my father and still am with my mom, but I never had a chosen family like other people do. I never had friends that I considered blood, not even at the Academy. Tuvok was my closest friend before we met, and we are close, but Vulcan friendships are just different. Then we got stranded. And you know what happened? You, B’Elanna, Tom, Harry, Seven, the whole _Voyager_ crew, you became my family out there. And while I held tight to Starfleet principles and regulations as my anchor, as my guiding light to make decisions, my heart just couldn’t find the room to hold on to Starfleet itself as more important that any of you.” 

She places her hand against his face and rubs her thumb across his cheekbone. “I have a real life now, Chakotay. People who love me and who I love back. That’s enough for me. I don’t need Starfleet. You are enough.”

The look that crosses his face is confusing - shock and joy and love all tangled up into each other - but then he’s kissing her again, turning her so that she’s pressed against the back of the sofa, as he attacks her mouth like their lives depend on them being as close together as possible. His hands are in her hair and she rakes her nails up his back and shoulder blades, answering his passion with equal measure of her own. The sound of the doorbell brings them back to Earth. 

“That would be the food,” she whispers against his lips.

“If we don’t answer, they’ll leave,” he says, trailing kisses down her jaw and towards the spot by her ear that makes her crazy. 

“Aren’t you hungry,” she gasps out, as he bites her gently. 

“Starving,” he mumbles against her skin. 

The doorbell rings again. 

“Delivery for Janeway,” they hear through the door. 

“I’ll be right there,” she yells, placing both hands against his chest and pushing forcefully. 

“This isn’t over,” he calls, as she laughs and walks to the front door. She takes the food from the very confused delivery driver and sticks it on the kitchen island. Chakotay is still sitting on the sofa. “Come back here,” he says. 

“Or what,” she answers playfully. 

“There will be consequences.” 

“That sounds like an empty threat to me.” 

“Try me.” 

She arches an eyebrow at him, daring him to make good. Suddenly he’s moving, so quickly that it seems impossible for a man his size to move with such speed and grace, but he’s covered half the distance between them before she can even start to turn around to flee. She flies around the kitchen island and doubles back toward the living room, hearing him hot on her heels and vaults the coffee table to land standing on the sofa. She runs along the cushions, jumping back to the floor and takes the corner into their bedroom so narrowly that she feels the edge graze her arm. She’s almost to the bathroom when he catches her, arms around her waist, pulling her back toward him and placing a kiss against her neck. He lifts her up off the floor and then tosses her gently onto their bed, before crawling in after her. They are both laughing as he throws his arm over her waist and draws her flush against him. 

“Does Starfleet concede,” he asks. 

“Only to you,” she answers, before she kisses him again. She can feel the passion building between them again when she hears the console in the living room start to chime. It’s playing the official Starfleet channel chime. She feels Chakotay sigh in exasperation. 

“What does a man have to do to get 20 minutes in his own house to sleep with the woman he loves!” 

“Keep it together, Chakotay. We’ve got all night,” she laughs. They roll out of bed and walk into the living room. She plants herself on the couch, running her hands through her hair quickly to make sure that it doesn’t look like she was just rolling around in their bed, and then answers. 

“Admiral Patterson,” she says coolly, as his face appears on the screen. 

“Hello, Katie,” he answers. She can see from the look on his face that her greeting had hurt him. She had always called him Ted, except in class, ever since she had met him when she was 8 years old. “I need to talk to you. This is a secure line.” 

“Is this about Barradas II,” she asks. “Because if it is, Admiral Nechayev has already briefed me and Command will have my answer in the morning.” 

“It is,” he starts, “but not the way you think.” She stares at him in silence. If he wants to talk, then he will need to do the talking. 

“Katie,” he says again, then pauses. “Kathryn,” he amends, “I owe you an apology.” 

“Really,” she returns, voice full of false innocence, “whatever for?”

“You know what for, Kate - Kathryn. I - I’d like to explain, if you’ll let me. To Chakotay too, since I assume he’s there.”

“Well, I live here,” Chakotay says drily, moving into frame on the console as he comes to sit beside her. He’s brought her a plate of the takeout and a water. 

“I don’t exactly know where to begin.” Patterson rubs his hands together nervously. “I suppose I’ll start with the bombing. Kathryn, I had no idea that there were any advance rumors at all about what happened down there.” She exchanges a look with Chakotay and Patterson clearly sees it. 

“I’m not trying to say that Starfleet didn’t know. I’m only telling you that I didn’t. Nechayev dumped the Barradas II diplomatic mission in my lap at the last second. She told me that the reason was that she thought you were the best person for the mission, but that you would refuse or at least go into it with the wrong mindset if she asked you to go. She knew that there was bad blood between you after everything that happened at your debriefing. She said that you wouldn’t say no to me and so she made me the point man for the whole operation. All the information that they sent me made it look like it would be perfectly safe. I even thought that it would be a good mission to relax you back into work from leave.”

Kathryn puts her untouched plate of food on the sofa beside her. She looks over at Chakotay and sees her own feelings mirrored on his face. Shock and disbelief and also disgust and a little fear all perch there in turn, settling into wariness. 

“Why are you just bringing this up now,” Chakotay asks. “You didn’t say anything about this on board the _Enterprise_ or in the months since the incident. You’re too smart to not realize that what you have just described amounts to a conspiracy within Starfleet Command. Someone wanted the diplomatic team down there with no idea that a massive attack was coming.”

“I honestly didn’t realize it until you and Picard pointed it out on the _Enterprise_ ,” Patterson admits, sheepishly. “I’m a scientist, not a tactician. And then, I didn’t want to believe it, I suppose.” He sighs deeply and then continues. “But when I heard that they were going to send you back there - I knew that I couldn’t just sit by and let it happen. I couldn’t ignore it or pretend that it wasn’t happening anymore.” 

“I’m not going,” Kathryn returns flatly. “I’m going to refuse. To hell with the consequences.” 

“They’ll court-martial you, Kathryn. I’m sure of it.”

“I was planning on resigning my commission if they try to make it an order,” she states. “They can’t court-martial me if I quit first.” 

“I think that Owen and I have a better idea, if you’ll let me tell it to you.” She nods her assent and he continues. “We think you should take a permanent posting at the Academy.”

“How does that help her,” Chakotay asks, leaning forward curiously. 

“It would keep her out of harms way, for one,” Patterson offers. “We haven’t lost a professor in the entire history of the Academy. But it would also allow her to stay in Starfleet and help Owen and some others of us that have come together to figure out what the hell is going on.”

“You think that this is more than just a conspiracy to do away with Kathryn,” Chakotay states. 

“Yes.”

“You think it’s Romulan interference, don’t you,” Kathryn interjects. “A plot to tear us apart from the inside?”

“That’s what Owen and the others think, yes. It was Romulan explosives they were using down there and something this diabolical just reeks of their kind of espionage. We think that they are hoping to take advantage of the fact that we are still fractured from the Dominion War.”

“You realize that what you are suggesting is that a Fleet Admiral is either working for the Romulans or being manipulated by someone who is, right? That those are the only two options since Nechayev has been involved with this Barradas II nonsense both times,” Chakotay says quietly. “That this means that this conspiracy, if it exists, goes straight to the top of Starfleet Command?”

“Yes, Captain. That’s why I think that it is critical that Kathryn stay with us. We are going to need all the help that we can get.” 

“Provided I say yes,” Kathryn starts, after a brief pause, “there is still an issue. I haven’t been offered a position at the Academy, and as far as I know, there isn’t one available. Creating one specifically for me would tip off the conspirators, so that really leaves us nowhere.” She looks at Chakotay to see if he has thought of some alternative that she hasn’t but he simply shakes his head and shrugs his shoulders in defeat. 

“If you agree, a spot will open up for the spring semester immediately,” Patterson states. 

“How on Earth are you going to manage that,” she rejoins. 

“I’ll retire, Katie.” She stares at him in shocked silence. “You’ll take my place in astrophysics and quantum chemistry, but I’ll hand over fractal calculus to Erickson. There’s talk of adding an astrometrics course dedicated to the delta quadrant which would be yours, as well. All you have to do is say ‘yes,’ Kathryn.”

“Admiral,” Chakotay starts slowly, “are you sure about this?”

“As sure as I can be.” 

“There must be some other way,” Kathryn chips in. “The Academy means everything to you, Ted.” 

“Not more than you, Katie. Not more than Starfleet. If we don’t do something about this, it won’t matter if I still have a job. Say yes, Katie.” 

She turns to look at Chakotay, seeing her own shock mirrored on his face. He seems to pull himself together and nods almost imperceptibly. She turns to look back at the face of the man that she thought had betrayed her. 

“Yes, I’ll do it,” she answers. 

“You made the right decision, Katie,” he says, only a trace of sadness in his voice. “I’ll tell Owen and we can put this into action. We’ve already got an offer manufactured that looks like we sent it to you a few days ago. No one will be able to do anything about it when you accept this instead of Barradas II.”

“I’ll keep an eye out for it,” she answers. “And Ted? Thank you.”

“I’m just sorry that I let you down, Katie. You died because of me.”

“Fortunately, I’m pretty hard to keep down,” she smiles. “I even got assimilated by the Borg once.”

“I remember. Goodbye, Katie. Chakotay.”

“Thank you, Admiral,” Chakotay returns as Kathryn raises her hand in goodbye. Patterson is gone as the console goes dark. 

Simultaneously, they slump back into the sofa, each absorbed in their own thoughts as they process the bombshell that has been dropped on them. 

“You know what this means, right,” Chakotay says, breaking the silence.

“What,” she answers. 

“We are going to be working together again.”

“On opposite ends of the campus,” she says with a smile. “They keep the scientists sequestered far away from you tactical people.”

“But we are going to get to have lunch together!”

“That’s your takeaway from this conversation,” she laughs. 

“It’s what I’m choosing to focus on for right now,” he replies. He brushes his hand through her hair. “How are you feeling?” 

“I’m not really sure,” she admits. “Shocked, angry, sad, relieved. A little terrified of teaching,” she feels her lips lift into a crooked smile. 

“Kathryn Janeway is terrified of a few tiny cadets?”

“I’ve been one of those ‘tiny cadets.’ I know what they’re capable of.” He laughs at her and kisses her gently. 

“Can I ask you something,” he whispers against her lips. 

“Anything,” she answers. 

“Did you mean it?”

“Did I mean what,” she says, struggling to focus as he’s drawing his lips along her jaw. 

“Before Patterson called, you said that you didn’t care about Starfleet. That I was enough for you. That you were choosing me.” He pulls himself away from her to look into her eyes. “Do you really believe that I’m enough?”

She looks at him and sees uncertainty there still and it sends a painful sadness through her soul. She had spent so long having to hold him as second to anything that she did, to any decision that she made, that she knows he still can’t believe that she will choose him first now. 

“I told you once, a long time ago, that if I let myself love you, that I was afraid that I would destroy the universe for you,” she starts quietly. “Well, I love you, Chakotay. And I’m sure now that I would raze the Earth, put out the stars, tear the entire fabric of reality apart for you. Enough doesn’t even begin to describe what you are to me.” 

His lips meet hers with such force that it’s like drowning. He is everywhere at once and her whole world has suddenly boiled down to just the points where they are touching, to the pressure of his lips and tongue against hers, to his hands in her hair and on her waist, to the movement of his hips against hers. 

And then suddenly he’s gone. She opens her eyes to find him walking away from her and she’s too stunned to do anything about it, except bring her hand to her mouth, feeling her bruised lips with her fingers. 

Just as she has come back to reality enough to ask what’s going on, he returns from the bedroom and drops to his knees in front of her. 

“What are you doing,” she asks, searching his face for a clue as to why he had stopped kissing her so suddenly. 

“I needed something.” 

“What could you have possibly needed right in the middle of what we were just doing,” she asks, almost irritated that he could have been thinking about anything else while he was kissing her like that. 

“This,” he says, and for the first time she notices the small box in his hands. “Marry me, Kathryn,” he husks, flipping the box open to reveal a ring with a brilliant blue stone in the center and a diamond halo. “You are more than enough for me, as well. You are the love of my life, the calm in the storm of my soul. You bring me peace and I would long for nothing else for the rest of my life if you would agree to spend the rest of yours with me.”

“Yes,” she answers, taking his face in her hands. It surprises her that the answer is so easy. She had honestly thought that she was done with engagements, finished with trying to make it to the altar. She had Chakotay and they had a home and a life and that was all that she needed. But faced with the question, faced with her Chakotay asking her to bind her life to his, her soul had answered his immediately and without reservation. Yes. She leans forward and kisses him again and it’s like the first time all those years ago, barely a touch of lips together as she says it again and again, the word yes, over and over like if she stops saying it, it will cease to be true.

She feels him take her left hand from his cheek and slide the ring on her finger. It fits perfectly, like it was made for her. 

“Yes,” she hears him ask against her lips, like he’s still not sure that he heard it correctly the last hundred times. 

“Yes, Chakotay. Nothing would make me happier than to marry you.”

He stands up then, pulling her to her feet with him and then he picks her up and spins her around the room. When he puts her down, he is wearing the most beautiful smile on his face and he brings a hand to rest on her neck, stroking her ear with his thumb. 

“I’m the happiest man alive,” he says. 

“Me too,” she answers, even though it doesn’t really make any sense, but she knows that he understands.

“Come here.” He pulls her closer and kisses her deeply, starting a fire inside her.

They don’t even make it to the bedroom. Instead, she’s suddenly pressed against the wall of the living room, not caring that there is a light switch in her back, focused only on how he’s moving between her legs and kneading her breast and nipping at her neck. She feels herself come undone around him, moaning out his name as she is thrown over the edge. He answers seconds later as he follows her off the cliff and she feels him shudder inside her. They stay locked together for a few minutes, foreheads pressed together, until their senses return. 

“Sorry about that,” he mumbles. 

“Why,” she asks, still a little muddleheaded. 

“I couldn’t wait,” he grins a little and his dimples start to show. “I had intended to take you to bed and tease you for an hour or so to celebrate but you were so irresistible I couldn’t help myself.” 

“I wouldn’t say no to that plan now,” she grins back. “But this was good, too. Amazing, actually. Although this light switch is fighting its way toward one of my kidneys.” 

“Oh, god, sorry.” He quickly pulls her away from the wall and walks her into the bedroom. 

“It was worth it,” she says, kissing him before he lowers her down to the bed. He climbs in beside her and they lay facing each other, slowly becoming tangled up in each other again. 

Many hours later, she’s laying with her head on his chest, looking at the ring on her finger as it trails along his abdomen. It will take some getting used to, having it there. She had never worn the ring that Mark had given her, except on special occasions. She could never really explain why. She had worn Justin’s ring, but it had been so long ago that having a circlet of gold and gems there seems completely foreign. 

“Do you like it,” she heard him ask above her. 

“I love it,” she answers honestly. “I’ve never seen a sapphire this shade before.” 

“It’s not a sapphire. It’s eisillium. It’s pretty rare, only a few kilograms have been found in the alpha quadrant in the last century. But it’s the same color as your eyes, so I knew it was for you.” 

“How much did you spend on me, Chakotay,” she asks in complete and utter shock. From the sounds of it, she’s wearing a small fortune on her hand. 

“Enough.” She can hear the grin in his voice and knows that he’ll never tell her. “Besides,” he continues, “I’m only doing this the once. It’s the only engagement ring I’ll ever buy.”

“It better be,” she returns, angling her head up to kiss his jaw gently. 

“I promise,” he laughs. “We should sleep, Kathryn.”

“Probably,” she agrees. 

“I love you, future wife.”

“I love you, future husband.” She tucks herself back against his chest and feels his breathing change a few minutes later as he finds sleep first. 

She looks back at the ring again, glittering even in the low light of the moon from the window, and reflects on how impossibly much her life has changed in a single day. She isn’t sure when they will get married or how good a teacher she will be. She isn’t sure who they will decide to tell about the engagement first or how successful they will be in hunting down the mole in Starfleet Command. She isn’t sure about so many things and yet, for the first time in a very long time, she realizes that she is totally at peace. She realizes that she can figure all of those other things out because Chakotay will be by her side the whole way. They have each other. It’s all that they have ever needed. _It’s enough_ , she thinks and then follows Chakotay into sleep. 

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well kids, we made it. The end. Thanks for sticking with me as this exploded into so much more than I had intended when I started writing. I hope it has been enjoyable to read, because it has really been such a joy to write. Thank you all so much.


End file.
